bug#10020: cp -i -l asks for permission to overwrite then fails to do so

[Maximiliano Curia]

Hi,

I'm reviewing some old bugs reported to Debian and found this one interesting.

The problem seems to be that cp -l won't work if the file exists, and the -i 
option
won't "force" (work as if the user has given a -f option) the deletion of the
destination file, to make the link work.

A small test could be:

$ rm -rf test; ls test; mkdir test; touch test/a test/b; cp -il test/a test/b
ls: cannot access test: No such file or directory
cp: overwrite `test/b'? y
cp: cannot create link `test/b': File exists

So, either the question generated with the -i option shouldn't be asked, or it
shouldn't fail.

The full report can be found here:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=455522

Thanks,
-- 
"There are only two things wrong with C++: The initial concept and the
implementation."
-- Bertrand Meyer
Saludos /\/\ /\ >< `/

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