Yeah, that's exactly the feature I've been wanting (only with mv instead of cp). I actually joined this list to figure out why it had been deprecated.
One day, when I have time to fully understand the source code, I'll sit down and write a "--no-overwrite" patch for mv and cp that silently ignores moving/copying files when a file with the same name exists at the destination. --Mark On Saturday 25 August 2007 11:57:55 pm alessandro salvatori wrote: > My case is the exact opposite of what you are talking about. > Irrespectively of the original files, i want to keep the existing files at > the destination, even if older. > > and cp --reply=no, without any other fancy thing that would have avoided a > prompt, was the sweetest thing to do. it was... :( > > cheers > -Alessandro > > On 8/25/07, Bob Proulx <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Eric Blake wrote: > > > Why not use "rsync --ignore-existing" instead? > > > > Agreed that rsync is definitely the right tool for this task. > > > > Most of the time when people are trying to avoid overwriting existing > > files it is because they are trying to avoid spending the computer > > time to do the copy again and not trying to avoid changing the file > > again. A large directory of large files, say a photo gallery, can > > take a long time to complete a full copy for example. In which case I > > would not use the rsync --ignore-existing option even though it does > > exactly answer the question. That would not sync the file if the file > > were different. Instead I would simply let rsync determine that the > > file has been copied correctly previously and skip copying it a second > > time. This is the sweet spot for rsync. > > > > To have rsync do this optimization the timestamp must be copied. That > > means that -t option must be present otherwise rsync acts similarly to > > cp and the file will have a current timestamp. I prefer -a because it > > does the right thing and is equivalent to the -rlptgoD options. > > > > rsync -a source/ destination/ > > > > I prefer to use source to destdir/ > > > > rsync -a /path/to/src/somedir /path/to/dst/ > > > > That would result in /path/to/dst/somedir when the rsync is finished. > > > > Bob _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils