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

[Jim Meyering]

address@hidden (Eric Blake) wrote:
>> 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

In this tiny corner case, GNU mv violates POSIX even when
POSIXLY_CORRECT is set.  And I want to keep it that way.
The POSIX requirement is simply too counter-intuitive.

> 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;

I'm sure that Jim will not spend more time on this :)