tag 12365 wontfix thanks On 09/06/2012 04:50 AM, Anoop Sharma wrote: > When -n option of cp is used and the DEST file exists, then, as > expected, cp is not able to copy the SOURCE to DEST. > > However, cp returns 0 in this case.
cp -n is not mandated by POSIX, so we are free to do as we wish here. But looking at history, we added -n for coreutils 7.1 in Feb 2009, and the mail from that thread includes: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2008-12/msg00159.html which states we are modeling after FreeBSD. A quick check on my FreeBSD 8.2 VM shows: $ echo one > bar $ echo two > blah $ cp -n blah bar $ echo $? 0 $ cat bar one that FreeBSD also returns 0 in this case, and I don't want to break interoperability. Therefore, I'm going to close this as a WONTFIX, unless you also get buy-in from the BSD folks. By the way, there's no need to post three separate emails with the same contents, without first waiting at least 24 hours. Like most other moderated GNU lists, you do not have to be a subscriber to post, and even if you are a subscriber, your first post to a given list will be held in a moderation queue for as long as it takes for a human to approve your email address as a non-spammer for all future posts (generally less than a day). -- Eric Blake [email protected] +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
