Re: bug in copy-directory

[Thierry Volpiatto]

Lennart Borgman <address@hidden> writes:

> On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 6:13 PM, Thierry Volpiatto
> <address@hidden> wrote:
>>>
>>> Isn't the semantics of "cp" broken + undescribed?
>> No
>
> Yes ;-)
>
>>> I had a directory x1, but no x2. Doing
>>>
>>>   cp -r x1 x2
>>>
>>> works as I expect it to, i.e. x1 and x2 are identical.
>>>
>>> However after a second
>>>
>>>   cp -r x1 x2
>>>
>>> there is suddenly a directory x1 inside x2.
>> That's what is expected, imagine with what you expect, x2 is your home
>> directory or /etc, and you copy x1 to it by error...
>
> So? The urge to copy?
So x1 will overwrite your important directory and you will lost all.
So i think cp do the right thing, since a long time as said by Andreas.

>>> I really dislike this kind of context specific semantics that is both
>>> unintuitive and undescribed.
>> cp have a nice man page, you should read it.
>
> I do not have it on w32. Just the output from cp --help and it does
> not describe this behaviour.
You can install VirtualBox or similar and install a GNU/Linux system on
it ...

-- 
A+ Thierry
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