bug#15232: cp -i a/s b/s c

[Bernhard Voelker]

On 09/19/2013 11:02 PM, address@hidden wrote:
>> Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>> enough that without it, cp is vulnerable to a subtle type of exploit.
> 
> Well some word about this should be in some footnote in the cp INFO manual.

It would be vulnerable "without it", as Jim wrote.
So I don't think the man or info pages are the right place.
We even have a test case for that:
http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/coreutils.git/tree/tests/cp/abuse.sh

BTW: I'm not sure if we're talking about two different things now:
The OP was talking about ordinary files a/s and b/s which leads to

  cp: will not overwrite just-created 'c/s' with 'b/s'

whereas Jim is talking about a/s being a symlink which leads to

  cp: will not copy 'b/s' through just-created symlink 'c/s'

Have a nice day,
Berny