Re: Interactivity (-i) and non-interactivity

[Andreas Schwab]

Jan Engelhardt <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,
>
>
> by default, coreutils cp will overwrite a file. Hence I put in
>
>       alias cp='/bin/cp -i'
>
> into the system-wide profile. However, users wishing to override the 
> now-system-default of interactivity cannot do so because -f does not 
> cancel -i, and --reply is deprecated. The "mv" and "rm" programs 
> however, do The Right Thing, along the lines of
>
>       case 'f':
>               x.interactive = false;
>
> "cp" on the other hand is missing this. The following patch adds it in.

This is wrong.  The -i and -f options are independent.  The -f option only
tells cp to try harder to overwrite unwritable files, but has no effect on
interactivity.

Andreas.

-- 
Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, address@hidden
SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany
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