[email protected] wrote: > OK but (info "(coreutils) Backup options") should also link back to the exact > cp -b spot, else most folks will miss it. > > P.S., There _is_ an easier way of making backups of several files, > But there is a bug, one has to do it one at a time despite -b. Bug bug bug. > > $ \cp -fb h k l . > cp: `h' and `./h' are the same file > cp: `k' and `./k' are the same file > cp: `l' and `./l' are the same file > $ \cp -fb h h > $
No, that was deliberate. I deliberately restricted the "make backup only" functionality to the very limited case that is documented. Widening the semantics, as you suggest above, seems like it would make this "feature" more likely to be discovered accidentally -- with data loss, when both originals and backups are removed. If people think the make-backup-only feature is useful enough for multiple files, then we can consider adding an --only-backup option, (better name welcome, but it cannot start with "--backup") rather than co-opting the --force --backup combination and requiring a script to process more than one at a time.
