bug#61105: closed (cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber)

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Your message dated Tue, 31 Jan 2023 08:55:48 -0800
with message-id <b16b0403-2064-06d2-234c-7121d38374c4@cs.ucla.edu>
and subject line Re: bug#61105: cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #61105,
regarding cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber
to be marked as done.

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61105: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=61105
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--- Begin Message --- Subject: cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:52:09 -0500

i've been under the mistaken assumption that the -n/--no-clobber option exits
non-zero when the target exists, but someone pointed out to me recently that
it silently ignores existing files.  can we get a setting to control this ?

basically i've been writing things like:
if ! cp -n foo bar; then
  ... error out because bar already exists, or otherwise failed ...
fi

when really i need to write:
if [ -e bar ] || ! cp foo bar; then
  ... error out ...
fi
-mike

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--- Begin Message --- Subject: Re: bug#61105: cp/mv: want a fatal --no-clobber Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2023 08:55:48 -0800 User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.4.2

On 2023-01-30 13:35, Pádraig Brady wrote:

This is a good observation.
Also the current "skip" functionality of coreutils cp -n
is already catered for with the --update option.

For consistency, there too the exit status should reflect whether the cp action was done.

I installed the attached patch to implement this; comments welcome. In the meantime I'm boldly closing the bug report.

0001-cp-ln-mv-when-skipping-exit-with-nonzero-status.patch
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