On 10/06/2025 11:35, Pádraig Brady wrote:
On 10/06/2025 08:56, Σταύρος Ντέντος wrote:
Hello there,
I was wondering: Should the error message contain `-n/--no-clobber`
and/or use the same flag as the one used in the invocation?
Rationale: I try to write my dotfiles without shorthands - for future
readability.
So, "after a distro upgrade (Ubuntu 24.04)", it was so weird to me to
read that "`-n` is deprecated".
I assumed it was because of the shorthand was used - but I haven't
used it. Because of the aliases, my `cp` is plain `cp [-r] a b`. So no
`-n` on the terminal,
Remembering that I am using an alias:
```
$ command -v cp
alias cp='cp --no-clobber --preserve=links --preserve=timestamps'
```
Which again felt weird - because I am not using `-n` at all.
I thought that *precisely* the shorthand was the one that was
"non-portable" (for some out-of-my-understanding shorthand-flag
reason).
Version: `GNU coreutils 9.4, April 2024`
With regards,
Ntentos Stavros
Can you confirm `cp --version` says 9.4
We only deprecated --no-clobber in 9.5.
Also we don't error, only document
(and always mention both long and short options in the deprecation docs).
Ah I see this is an ubuntu patch,
so you'll need to redirect any suggestions there.
(They could drop the deprecation warning as
behavior of -n did not actually change for later
versions in ubuntu).
cheers,
Padraig
