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Accepted
Marcus Junius Brutus
Asked: 2014-11-20 10:46:42 +0800 CST

force cp to copy on dangling symlinks

  • 772

Is there any way to force cp (Bash 4.2.5, Ubuntu 12.04) to copy onto a dangling symlink?

cp a-file path/to/danling/symlink/a-file
cp: not writing through dangling symlink `path/to/danling/symlink/a-file`

cp -f seems to be impotent in this case and results in the same message.

symbolic-link

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Make cp remove the target file before copying:

    $ ln -s /random/file f              
$ cp -f a f                  
cp: not writing through dangling symlink ‘f’
$ cp --remove-destination a f
$ diff a f && echo yes
yes

    From man cp:

    --remove-destination
      remove  each existing destination file before attempting to open
      it (contrast with --force)
    • 30

  2. Just use unlink theSymLink where theSymLink is the actual symlink, then try again

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