On Monday 03 November 2003 23:08, Paul Eggert wrote: > Stefanos Harhalakis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > I believe that it should have an option to compare > > source and destination files before replacing the destination. > > I like the basic idea, and have been using a wrapper like yours for many > years. But doesn't the implementation have to be more complicated than > that? > > For example, suppose the destination already exists, and has the proper > contents, but has the wrong ownership? Or suppose the destination > is supposed to be stripped? Or a backup was supposed to be made? Etc.
I believe you're right... I don't know about coreutils internals but I just took a quick look at copy.c. As far as I understand, copy() is an one-for-everything function. Perhaps copy_internal() should be changed. As far as i can see, copy_reg() does the real copy so this is the function that should be avoided, so the check should be done just before calling copy_reg(). This way you're always sure about keeping backups etc etc.. The only catch is that another flag should be added to cp_options. Strip is not a problem since it will be run no matter if copy() realy copyied the file or not.. <<V13>>
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