Thanks to everyone for the answers. Frederik
On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 12:29:24PM -0700, Paul Eggert wrote: > Frederik Eaton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > is there a reason why users wouldn't always want a "copyFile" > > function to remove the destination first? > > Lots and lots and lots of reasons. For example, the destination file > might be read-only, and the user might want the copy to fail in that > case. A copyFile that first removed the destination would mistakenly > succeed on a read-only destination. > > Another example: "cp infile /dev/null". Replacing /dev/null with a > regular file is a bad idea, in my experience. (And I have experience. :-) > > This may help to explain why Unix does not have a standard copy_file > function. Copying a file is harder than it looks, and there are lots > of options. Good luck with your attempt to simplify things for Haskell. > -- http://ofb.net/~frederik/ _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
