Bug 19148

Summary:	cp ignores -f and --force at cmdline
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Robin Green <greenrd>
Component:	fileutils	Assignee:	Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero>
Status:	CLOSED NOTABUG	QA Contact:	Aaron Brown <abrown>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	7.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-10-16 00:03:08 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Robin Green 2000-10-15 21:56:32 UTC

Version info:

[root@ega051000009 xml-cocoon]# rpm -q -f /bin/cp
fileutils-4.0x-3

When used at the command line, cp always prompts for overwriting a file,
regardless of whether the -f or --force switch is set or not, as shown.
According to "info cp", the -f switch should disable interactive prompting.

[root@ega051000009 xml-cocoon]# cp -f changes.xml /greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/
cp: overwrite `/greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/changes.xml'? y
[root@ega051000009 xml-cocoon]# cp --force changes.xml
/greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/
cp: overwrite `/greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/changes.xml'?
y                                                    [root@ega051000009
xml-cocoon]# cp changes.xml /greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/
cp: overwrite `/greenrd/ws2/xml-cocoon/changes.xml'?
n                                                                           

This bug does not occur on RedHat 6.2.

Comment 1 Alan Cox 2000-10-16 00:03:06 UTC

This is because by default cp is aliased to 'cp -i'. The behaviour of the GNU
supplied fileutils has changed so tht cp -i -f  still prompts.

Comment 2 Bernhard Rosenkraenzer 2000-10-16 09:17:28 UTC

And it's not a bug - the fileutils changelog states that they had to do it because POSIX demands it.

The 'fix' is to get rid of the "cp='cp -i'" alias in your ~/.bashrc.

Comment 3 Edouard Bourguignon 2006-11-16 10:58:26 UTC

why rm -f works?