I wish there was a way to just copy files that are missing without prompting. Especially over a very slow connection, it would be more efficient to just do an update rather than prompting and overwriting implicitly.
Does anyone know what that argument is? Thanks, Patrick -----Original Message----- From: Eric Blake [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, November 22, 2009 10:07 AM To: Patrick Chin Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: cp command in linux issue -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to Patrick Chin on 11/22/2009 6:49 AM: > If I run cp as follows: > > # cp -Rup source destination > > Why would it prompt me for overwrites since the -u is part of the argument? Because -u has no bearing on whether prompts are asked; it only turns on a switch to inspect the timestamps. If the timestamps warrant a copy attempt, then the state of the other flags determine whether a prompt is still issued. > I don't really want prompting to occur and just update files that don't exist > or is newer. Then it sounds like you want to use -n (--no-clobber), which was added in coreutils 7.1. > I also tried: > > # cp -Rupf source destination > > And I was still prompted for yes and no for overwriting. You probably have an alias for cp that automatically includes -i, even though it is not shown by your command line (personally, I hate aliases that reuse the command name but turn on an option; I'd much rather give the alias a distinct name). But POSIX requires that cp prompt for overwriting if -i is in effect, regardless of whether -f is also in effect. It takes an explicit option, like -n, to overcome -i prompting based on POSIX rules. http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cp.html - -- Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well! Eric Blake [email protected] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAksJU7EACgkQ84KuGfSFAYB1XQCeJeevEn7xsCFnHZizn/8rO74N IzUAn2Ov+cUQfxoPlwZ0EG8wxZn4NY3u =NWjV -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
