Sorry, but I disagree and think this is a bug in Debian 11, GNU patch
2.7.6. -b forces a backup file, and the manual says of "-V existing":
Make numbered backups of files that already have them, otherwise
simple backups. This is the default.
This example shows that the first patch application creates a backup
file, and the second patch application overwrites it and does not
instead create a numbered file:
$ echo 1 > a
$ cp a b
$ echo 2 >> b
$ diff a b > diff1
$ patch -b -V existing a < diff1
patching file a
$ ls -C
a a.orig b diff1 diff2
$ echo 3 >> b
$ diff a b > diff2
$ patch -b -V existing a < diff2
patching file a
$ ls -C
a a.orig b diff1 diff2
$ cat a.orig
1
2
--
Bruce Momjian <br...@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EDB http://enterprisedb.com
