svnmucc and creating new files in existing directories

[Sam Ruby]

When I moved whimsy from Ubuntu 14.04 (svn 1.8.8) to Ubuntu 16.04 (svn 
1.9.3), svnmucc commands started failing for me:

$ svnmucc --revision 0 --message 'test data, please ignore' -- put - 
https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/financials/Bills/paid/test < test
svnmucc: E160016: Can't commit to 
'https://svn.apache.org/repos/private/financials/Bills/paid' because it 
is not a directory

I can continue to replace svnmucc with svn checkout --depth empty; svn 
add, svn commit sequences; but I was wondering if I'm using svnmucc 
incorrectly?

- Sam Ruby