The manpage of cp says
-f For each existing destination pathname, remove it and create a
new file, without prompting for confirmation, regardless of its
permissions. This option overrides any use of -i.
-i Write a prompt to the standard error output before copying a file
that would overwrite an existing file. If the response from the
standard input begins with the character `y', the file copy is
attempted.
but that isnot what cp actually does:
$ rm -f echo bar
$ echo new > foo
$ echo old > bar
$ cp -fi foo bar
overwrite bar? n
$ cat bar
old
Accoording to the manpage, the '-f' should have overrided the '-i'.
Instead, it asked for confirmation, which said 'n', and cp(1) did
not copy foo over bar, as it still has the old content.
Jan
