since move can fail...and windows OS doesn't handle that very well.

1. It's the unix move semantics, silently overwriting a protected file, that suck.
2. In you look inside File::Copy at the move()/mv() routine, it uses a 'delete if necessary and copy' process on windows anyway.

It's the unix move semantics, silently overwriting a protected file, that suck.

Un*x does not do that, you need 'mv -f file1 file2' to force the mv on existing file...o maybe I did not get your comment. Now if a command tries to enforce or not (vi does e.g) the w bit on a file is another problem.

cheers --stephan

Un*x does not do that, you need 'mv -f file1 file2' to force the mv on existing file.

Strange. I guess things have changed since Re^3: A DWIM too far?. Like maybe they inverted to the default behaviour? {Thor] must be real disappointed.

Play with rename a little on your system, because I doubt that that Perl has changed it's defaults to match. It certainly hasn't on my platform, despite that it had safe semantics from the get go.

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Un*x does not do that, you need 'mv -f file1 file2' to force the mv on existing file.

No, you don't.

$ echo foo >foo
$ echo bar >bar
$ mv foo bar
$ cat bar
foo
$ uname -a
Linux raven 2.6.22-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Jul 12 15:59:45 GMT 2007 i686 
+GNU/Linux
$ mv --version
mv (GNU coreutils) 5.97
[download]

and from the info page:

If a destination file exists but is normally unwritable, standard input is a terminal, and the `-f' or `--force' option is not given, `mv' prompts the user for whether to replace the file. (You might own the file, or have write permission on its directory.) If the response is not affirmative, the file is skipped.

Un*x does not do that, you need 'mv -f file1 file2' to force the mv on existing file

That's not true. The default behavior for cp, rm, and mv is to behave as if '-f' was specified on the command line.

I think you are confused because all three of these commands are usually aliased to 'cp -i', 'rm -i', and 'mv -i' respectively. Run 'alias' to see this. The '-f' option is useful because it overrides the '-i', though you could also escape the alias ('\mv') or full path the comamnd ('/bin/mv') to achieve the same results.