, I issued the following Linux command:#>cp -rf /dir1/* /dir2
cp: overwrite ‘/dir1/subdir1/file.dat with /dir2/subdir1/file.dat’
Since I had about 300 files to copy, it was not easy for me to keep typing ‘y’. So, I did some searches and found the following solution.
1. Run the alias command to check if cp was set to alias with a different command.
#> alias
alias cp='cp -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias rm='rm -i'
Which you can see, cp was acturaly alias as 'cp –i'. -i, --interactive, which means prompt before overwrite. Therefore, -f was ignored.
I want to remove the alias so I could copy the files. To do so, I needed to issue the following command:
#>unalias cp
However, in normally situation, we do want to use cp –i to prevent accidentally override files. Therefore, I issued the following command after done with copying the files:
#>alias ‘cp=cp –I’
One more detail, to perform the above steps, it required root access. So, what happen if we don’t have root access? Well, the following command works:
Command:
#> /bin/cp -rf /dir1/* /dir2
It is because that the /bin/cp copy is not alias to any other command switch.
Posts
1 comment:
Hi,
(Posting here because you're the first result about it enabling anonymous comments (*too lazy to register*)).
Four other ways to do it I found on other webpages:
$ \cp -f example1 example2
$ 'cp' -f example1 example2
$ yes|cp example1 example2
$ cp -a example1 example2
(Note the last one is short for "--archive", and will preserve permissions, and owner/group if you have the necessary permissions).
I didn't test any of them though. I decided to use a more simple:
alias cpf='/bin/cp -f'
... in my ~/.bashrc (well, ~/.bash_aliases in my case, sourced from my ~/.bashrc).
(Note you have to specify '/bin/cp', otherwise the 'cp -i' alias will be called afterward, and you'll end up with 'cp -i -f' as before...).
I'm thinking of maybe using `alias cpi='cp -i'`, instead of aliasing `cp` directly, too... 'have to get used to it though...
Note that `mv` causes the very same issue. Not `rm` (yet?) though.
(Concerning your article, you don't need root access for alias/unalias. And you wrote `cp –I` instead of `cp –i`, when talking about reestablishing the alias :p).
Bye.
Post a Comment