Subject: cp 8.16 not writing through, writing over

From: [email-masked] (Karl Berry)
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 13:19:02 GMT

Create dangling symlink:
$ ln -s foo bar

Attempt to write over it with cp:
$ \cp -i /etc/issue bar
cp: not writing through dangling symlink 'bar'

In the past, it would ask me if I wanted to replace bar.  (As desired.)

The error message makes me think that it is thinking I am writing
"through" a dangling symlink to a directory.  But that gets
a different error message, which seems fine:
$ \cp -i /etc/issue bar/baz
cp: cannot create regular file 'bar/baz': No such file or directory

coreutils 8.16, compiled from original source on CentOS 5.8 (libc 2.5, 
it seems).

karl