I agree it would be bad to add empty lines. I came up with this function: function is_newline_terminated { test -z "$(tail -c1 "${1}")" } to check whether an append would corrupt the file. Maybe something like: is_newline_terminated ~/.ssh/authorized_keys || echo >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys would work in the appropriate place. On 3/20/16, Stephen Harris <lists@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 07:30:01PM +0000, Alex Bligh wrote: >> >> On 20 Mar 2016, at 19:15, Philip Hands <phil@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> > Is anyone going to be upset by the resulting blank lines being added by >> > ssh-copy-id when the file was not missing a terminating newline? >> >> Well it would be at least mildly annoying my previously nice looking file >> now has a pile of blank lines in just because someone didn't know >> how to use their editor ... > > You can be pretty sure it'd end up causing a bug report as well > ("ssh-copy-id introduces blank lines into good files"). > > -- > > rgds > Stephen > _______________________________________________ openssh-unix-dev mailing list openssh-unix-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.mindrot.org/mailman/listinfo/openssh-unix-dev