bug#17936: [SUGGESTION] cp behavior

[Pádraig Brady]

tag 17936 wontfix
close 17936
stop

On 07/04/2014 01:55 PM, Devyn Collier Johnson wrote:
> GNU Developers:
> 
>    I would like to make a suggestion for the "cp" command. As we all know, 
> the cp command accepts two arguments (cp SRC DEST). Could someone add a 
> little feature to give the cp command an interesting feature that the "copy" 
> command on DOS uses? On DOS, when "copy" is given one argument (the source 
> file), the command will assume the destination is the current working 
> directory. Can such a feature be added to "cp"? It is awful that a command by 
> Microsuck has an awesome feature that no Unix, Linux, or GNU guru has added 
> to the popular GNU-coreutils command. Also, if such a feature is added to 
> "cp", can "mv" also get the same feature?

Not at this stage no. You can easily add a function
it your shell config to provide this as a wrapper.

Consider the issue with:

  cd dangerous
  safe="blah"
  cp trigger $Safe  #oops typo => silent erroneous behavior

thanks,
Pádraig.