Re: [9fans] mv on directory

["Eric Van Hensbergen" <ericvh@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Nov 1, 2008 at 4:05 PM, Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com> wrote:
> On Nov 1, 2008, at 8:04 AM, Eric Van Hensbergen wrote:
>>
>> I would imagine that 99% of the time (more?) the behavior people
>> desire would be what you describe.
>
> But what is the behavior? Is it literally the above set of rc commands?
> Or is there an atomicity expectation as well? After dircp dirA dirB
> the contents of dirB could be surprising, especially given the later
> rm -r dirA.
>
> It seems that mv(1) was taken as far as one could go in terms
> of having a non-surprising behavior: mv dir1/file  dir2/file is
> equivalent to cp -x dir1/file dir2/file ; rm dir1/file.
>

Well, I suppose there'd have to be a bit more wrapping around checking
for failure of the copy before the erase -- but otherwise perhaps I'm
being dense and don't see the surprise.  Its clear you won't get the
atomicity, but there's no clear way to obtain that -- and, as I said,
I'm not sure who depends on that when using the mv command.

    -eric