I wrote: > John Rouillard <rouilj@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> I get the same result (0 exit status) on solaris 8 and solaris 10 with >> /bin/cp. I wonder what platform the example worked on. > cp does behave as the example suggests for me, on OS X and HPUX. I > suspect Bruce tested it on some BSD variant before putting it in the > docs. That would suggest that it probably works that way on most (all?) > BSDen. Still, if the GNU version doesn't act that way, we have a > problem. > The test-and-cp approach seems the most likely to be portable. I've applied patches for this. It turns out that before 9.0, we did have a warning that cp -i wasn't very trustworthy: It is advisable to test your proposed archive command to ensure that it indeed does not overwrite an existing file, <emphasis>and that it returns nonzero status in this case</>. We have found that <literal>cp -i</> does this correctly on some platforms but not others. If the chosen command but somebody "improved" that text in a way that made it sound like you could expect the command to work most places. On the whole it seems like a better idea to provide a sample command that is safe most everywhere, and then mention cp -i as a nonportable simplification. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-admin mailing list (pgsql-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-admin