Re: cp: preserve existing destination file

[Bob Proulx]

address@hidden wrote:
> Unfortunately, after a new system installation, I just today
> discovered, that the --reply=foo option in cp has been deprecated
> and is going to be removed.

Yes.  It didn't do what people thought it did.  It was possible to
have silent data loss.

> I often want to do "cp dir1/* dir2", but protect the files already
> existing in dir2 from being overwritten by the older files from
> dir1.  I could use "-u", but I often deal with files, on whose
> timestamps I cannot safely rely on.  How to do this without "-i
> --reply=no"? Or is there anything I overlooked? Hope not.

Use rsync for this functionality.

  $ rsync -a --ignore-existing file1 file2

See this reference for more information:

  
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/faq/#cp-and-mv-the-reply-option-is-deprecated

Bob