site_archiver@lists.apple.com Delivered-To: Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com On Nov 5, 2007, at 11:39 AM, Eric Gorr wrote: Yes. 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 - Kevin [1] <http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/cp.html> _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. Darwin-dev mailing list (Darwin-dev@lists.apple.com) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/darwin-dev/site_archiver%40lists.appl... Is this the right place for this question? 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. 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. This email sent to site_archiver@lists.apple.com