I think you'll find this was reported 3 years ago..
"bug#10471: Severe or critical - deletes existing files and leaves
nothing. (cp)"
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2015-04/msg00001.html
Unfortunately it was closed it out w/the reason that it was a
"cygwin/windows-only"
-- which I disagreed with. I was told the cygwin dev would check it out and
if it was in coreutils would move it back to active status (that was 3+
years ago).
On 6/8/2015 9:18 PM, Steffen Zahn wrote:
Hello,
I found that the cp command acts "sub-optimal" when copying
hard-linked files of the same name from several directories to one
target directory, it first copies the files then removes them. I
cannot see how that can be the intended behaviour. Please fix this.
best regards
Steffen Zahn
sz@gandalf:~ $ cd /tmp
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ mkdir 1 2 3
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ touch 1/a
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ ln 1/a 2/
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ ls -li 1 2
1:
total 0
262424 -rw-r--r-- 2 sz sz 0 Jun 9 06:10 a
2:
total 0
262424 -rw-r--r-- 2 sz sz 0 Jun 9 06:10 a
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ cp -a -u --verbose 1/* 2/* 3/
'1/a' -> '3/a'
removed '3/a'
cp: cannot create hard link '3/a' to '3/a': No such file or directory
sz@gandalf:/tmp $ cp --version
