Tom Lane wrote:
> Thom Brown <thom@linux.com> writes:
> > On 18 June 2011 04:13, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> >> I tested on FreeBSD 7.4 and saw a 1 error return:
>
> > And on a Mac (so through Darwin 10.7.0 a BSD version too):
>
> Yeah, see yesterday's discussion on pgsql-admin. I think the behavior
> with the error return may be a BSD-ism. In any case, GNU cp does *not*
> do what we want, and that accounts for a sufficiently large fraction of
> machines in the field that I think it's just unsafe to suggest using
> "cp -i" so prominently. There are too many people who'll just copy and
> paste the first example provided, especially if the warning to test it
> is buried several paragraphs later.
Agreed. Even if we could decide whether we want an existing file to
cause cp to fail or succeed, the bigger problem is that 'test ! -f $FILE
&& cp' and 'cp -i' often don't do the same thing, to the point where it
doesn't even seem worth mentioning the idea of using 'cp -i' at all.
I frankly don't think most users are competent enough to be able to test
their cp -i command, end even if they are, that script might migrate to
a machine that handles cp -i differently.
I think we should just document the test ! -f version and be done with
it, and maybe mention cp -i as non-portable.
-- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +
