The command 'mv --reply=no' does not work as expected. mv --help gives this information: " --reply={yes,no,query} specify how to handle the prompt about an existing destination file " I expect that this means when mv would overwrite a file it shouldn't. However, whether I use --reply=yes or --reply=no the file is always overwritten. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. echo a>a; echo b>b 2. mv --reply=no a b 3. cat b Actual Results: cat b ==> 'a' Expected Results: Unless I totally misunderstand how --reply works, cat b should result in 'b' This behavior has also been confirmed on Debian unstable.
Here is the relevant sourcecode snippet (edited for readybility): /* cp and mv treat -i and -f differently. */ if (x->move_mode) { if ((x->interactive == I_ALWAYS_NO && UNWRITABLE (dst_path, dst_sb.st_mode)) || ((x->interactive == I_ASK_USER || (x->interactive == I_UNSPECIFIED && x->stdin_tty && UNWRITABLE (dst_path, dst_sb.st_mode))) && (overwrite_prompt (dst_path, &dst_sb), 1) && ! yesno ())) { /* Pretend the rename succeeded, so the caller (mv) doesn't end up removing the source file. */ if (rename_succeeded) *rename_succeeded = 1; return 0; } } The condition (x->interactive == I_ALWAYS_NO && UNWRITABLE (dst_path, dst_sb.st_mode)) is the part affected by --reply=no, but only if the destination is not writable. Skipping the UNWRITABLE() test brings the desired behavior, so the question is if that's a bug or a feature (the man/info pages aren't clear on this).
closing this, as there's nothing we can really do about it
