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Re: Interactivity (-i) and non-interactivity
From: |
Bob Proulx |
Subject: |
Re: Interactivity (-i) and non-interactivity |
Date: |
Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:42:06 -0600 |
User-agent: |
Mutt/1.5.9i |
Peter D. wrote:
> Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> > by default, coreutils cp will overwrite a file. Hence I put in
> > alias cp='/bin/cp -i'
> > into the system-wide profile.
I always find it very annoying when distros or local admins do that
kind of thing. I causes me to need to undo all of that in my own
.profile et al files. I end up having a rather full environment file
simply to clean out the trash!
Why is it scary that cp will overwrite a file? rm removes files. mv
moves files. cp copies files. ln links files. tee writes files. ed
edits files. The shell's '>' redirects output to files. If you never
reuse disk space then the bit bucket fills up.
> > However, users wishing to override the now-system-default of
> > interactivity cannot do so
>
> They can do so, by using the full path name of the command.
> On my system,
>
> /bin/cp fileA fileB
>
> does what you want.
By calling it /bin/cp you are avoiding the alias. But it is a full
path and hard coding full paths into your finger memory is not a good
habit to get into because some commands move around. (Such as grep
and basename for examples.) The alias can also be avoided by:
unalias cp
command cp
\cp
'cp'
"cp"
env cp
All of those also avoid the alias.
Bob