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Re: Bug#389170: coreutils: mv -v fails on hardlinked files


From: Eric Blake
Subject: Re: Bug#389170: coreutils: mv -v fails on hardlinked files
Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2006 19:49:57 +0000

> And the result would be correct wether x is removed, or y was replaced (I
> see this similar to rm not doing the same thing as unlink to achieve removal
> of a name, but resorting to a variety of syscalls).

This corner case is problematic in POSIX.  The fact that GNU even removes
x is counter to a strict reading of POSIX, which requires that mv defer
to rename(2), and that rename is a no-op when the old and new name
refer to the same file (even when it is two different names of a hard
link).  But this is so counter-intuitive that GNU has chosen to break with
POSIX on this regards (except perhaps under POSIXLY_CORRECT; I'd
have to re-read the source to be sure).  So I'm not sure if Jim should
spend much more effort improving the verbose output; the fact that it
is different already goes to show that hard links are a special case.

-- 
Eric Blake




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