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Re: Short circuit cp -l



    Date:        Tue, 17 Jul 2018 09:06:53 -0400
    From:        "D'Arcy Cain" <darcy%NetBSD.org@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <409f3df1-c91c-897c-e4ea-98413263f68a%NetBSD.org@localhost>

  | Do you think that this is a candidate for a pullup to 8?

You've already been informed that it is too late for 8.0 (and I don't think 
that is the kind of change that is suitable for 8.0.1 - but it might be for
8.1)

You do understand though that you have changed the semantics?  The
old way, cp -l would only link the files that could have been copied, now
it will happily link unreadable files.   Also cp -il will no longer work, and
probably more.

With this change, I don't really know why the option needs to exist at
all, cp -l seems to be just a defective implementation of ln -f .. I'd be 
inclined to simply delete the -l option (or simply exec "ln" when the -l
option is given to cp, if there is some good reason for having a -l option).

kre



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