Re: [boost] boost.filesystem - rationale for copy_file

From: Victor A. Wagner Jr. (vawjr_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-01-28 01:52:32

At Thursday 2005-01-27 14:40, you wrote:
>On Thu, 27 Jan 2005 12:39:34 -0700
>"Victor A. Wagner Jr." <vawjr_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> > At Tuesday 2005-01-25 14:28, you wrote:
> >
> > >What is the rationale for having copy_file fail if the target file
> > >exists?
> > >
> > >This is not how any cp/copy in any shell I know of works, actually
> > >quite surprising.
> >
> > in windows (and every OS I've been on the writing team) the shell will
> > at least _ask_ for permission to overwrite.
>
>
>Hmmm.  I don't do windows, so I am no help there.  However, I am
>somewhat familiar with the unix environment, and the "cp" command under
>unix will copy over the existing file, without an error, warning, or
>prompt.  If you want that behavior, you have to pass it a command line
>argument (usually -i).  Some people may alias cp to get that behavior in
>their interactive shells (e.g., alias cp="cp -i"), but it is definitely
>not the default, and I agree that copy_file() call should not force the
>file to be gone before doing to copy.

well, I could comment on the wisdom (or lack thereof) in the way *nix chose 
to handle this (but I won't comment further than to say *nix was trying to 
solve a different problem).
but I was working on building systems for embedded work and their 
development.
We made sure you didn't accidently get rid of something.

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Victor A. Wagner Jr.      http://rudbek.com
The five most dangerous words in the English language:
               "There oughta be a law"