>>>>> William Dunlap via R-devel <r-devel@r-project.org>
>>>>> on Fri, 8 Sep 2017 09:54:58 -0700 writes:
> When I mistakenly use file.copy() with a directory for the 'from' argument
> and a non-directory for the 'to' and overwrite=TRUE, file.copy returns
> FALSE, meaning it could not do the copying. However, it also replaces the
> 'to' file with a zero-length file.
> dir.create( fromDir <- tempfile() )
> cat(file = toFile <- tempfile(), "existing file\n")
> readLines(toFile)
> #[1] "existing file"
> file.copy(fromDir, toFile, recursive=FALSE, overwrite=TRUE)
> #[1] FALSE
I get TRUE here, on Fedora Linux F24 and F26,
for R 3.3.3, 3.4.1 and R-devel
> readLines(toFile)
> #character(0)
(and I get the same here)
> or, with recursive=TRUE,
> dir.create( fromDir <- tempfile() )
> cat(file = toFile <- tempfile(), "existing file\n")
> readLines(toFile)
> #[1] "existing file"
> file.copy(fromDir, toFile, recursive=TRUE, overwrite=TRUE)
> #[1] FALSE
again I get TRUE instead,
otherwise the same bahavior.
> #Warning message:
> #In file.copy(fromDir, toFile, recursive = TRUE, overwrite = TRUE) :
> # 'recursive' will be ignored as 'to' is not a single existing directory
> readLines(toFile)
> #character(0)
> Is this behavior intended?
I don't think so (but I had not been involved in writing these).
Effectively,
file.copy(from, to, overwrite=TRUE)
in the case where 'to' is not a directory and from, to are both of length 1,
is basically the following
ok <- file.create(to)
if(ok) ok <- file.append(to, from)
return(ok)
Since you get FALSE when I get TRUE, it is not quite sure if in
your case file.append() is called at all... but I'd guess so.
I think the bug is that file.append(to, from) does not give an
error in our case where 'from' is a directory.
> dir.exists(fromDir) && file.exists(toFile)
[1] TRUE
> file.append(toFile, fromDir) # should signal a warning and give FALSE
[1] TRUE
>
I'd be grateful if you'd file a bug report.
Martin
> Bill Dunlap
> TIBCO Software
> wdunlap tibco.com
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