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Full Discussion: What's the reason behind having -n option for mv command?
Operating Systems OS X (Apple) What's the reason behind having -n option for mv command? Post 302967808 by bakunin on Sunday 28th of February 2016 04:29:41 PM
Old 02-28-2016
Quote:
Originally Posted by scrutinizerix
I still can not grasp benefits of using
Code:
mv -n source file target file

What's the point?
According to the man page of OS X i found in the net "-n" prevents the mv command to overwrite already existing files. That means: if you have files A, B and C and you do a

Code:
mv A D

you will end up with three files again, B, C and D (the former A). Whereas, when you issue:

Code:
mv A B

you will end up with only two files: B (the former A) and C. The original B will be wiped out. This may sometimes be the desired result, but sometimes it may not. To guard against accidentally wiping out a file you might want to keep is the reason "-n" exists.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
This User Gave Thanks to bakunin For This Post:
scrutinizerix
 

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

zipmerge

ZIPMERGE(1)						      General Commands Manual						       ZIPMERGE(1)

NAME

       zipmerge - merge zip archives

SYNOPSIS

       zipmerge [-DhIiSsV] target-zip source-zip Op source-zip ...

DESCRIPTION

       zipmerge  merges  the  source zip archives source-zip into the target zip archive target-zip.  By default, files in the source zip archives
       overwrite existing files of the same name in the target zip archive.

       Supported options:

	      -D   Ignore directory components in file name comparisons.

	      -h   Display a short help message and exit.

	      -I   Ignore case in file name comparisons

	      -i   Ask before overwriting files.  See also -s.

	      -S   Do not overwrite files that have the same size and CRC32 in both the source and target archives.

	      -s   When -i is given, do not before overwriting files that have the same size and CRC32.

	      -V   Display version information and exit.

EXIT STATUS

       zipmerge exits 0 on success and 1 if an error occurred.

SEE ALSO

       zipcmp(1), ziptorrent(1), libzip(3)

AUTHORS

       Dieter Baron <dillo@giga.or.at> and Thomas Klausner <tk@giga.or.at>

NiH								   June 4, 2008 						       ZIPMERGE(1)
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