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Re: A change with the -n option for cp in Mac OS X 10.5

Kevin Van Vechten wrote:
> Eric Gorr wrote:
>
> > Is this the right place for this question?
>
>
> Yes.
>
>
> > Under 10.4.10, when executing cp -n, cp would return an exit
> > status of 0 if the file you told it to copy existed or not.
> >
> > Under 10.5, cp will return an exit status of 1 if the file
> > already exists and one uses the -n option.
> >
> > I was just wondering if:
> >
> >
> > 1. 10.4.10 had a bug
> > 2. 10.5 has a bug
> > 3. the definition of how the -n option is supposed to work has changed
> >
> >
> > It seems strange that cp would return an exit status of 1 now if
> > the file already exists. After all, the command will do exactly what
> > it is supposed to do and not copy the file.
>
>
> I suppose it was #3. It looks like the exit status was changed due to
> feedback that returning a zero exit status gives no way to determine
> whether or not a file was actually copied (<rdar://problem/3624563>).
> This is a divergence from the FreeBSD behavior in 10.4.10 (FreeBSD
> introduced the non-standard -n flag). Because -n is non-standard[1],
> I'd recommend against using it.

Ok, thanks.

Still seems strange that it would be considered an error if the command does what it is told to do.

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 >A change with the -n option for cp in Mac OS X 10.5 (From: Eric Gorr <email@hidden>)



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