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if one executes the following two commands in one line, as follows,

rm -rf dir ; cp -r dir2 dir

it may complain that cp can not create directory dir/subdir: File exists

but if these two commands are executed in two lines, no errors will be thrown. I am just wandering what is the difference? and more importantly, how to execute two commands in one line, with the effect exactly the same as by two lines...

EDIT: I change it to cp -r dir2 dir. Besides, what is in dir or dir2 is huge, typically 4gb.

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There's nothing wrong with the command line you posted. Check to see if either command is aliased or redefined as a function: type -a rm cp. – Dennis Williamson Jul 20 '12 at 19:20
type -a rm cp shows rm is redirected to rm -i, so if cp – Richard Jul 20 '12 at 19:25
On my system, it gives a different error: cp: omitting directory `dir2' even when rm is not aliased. So, there's definitely something going on, but see solution below. – CodeGnome Jul 20 '12 at 19:27
By "redirected" I assume you mean aliased. The -i option shouldn't cause the problem you're seeing. Is dir2 a symlink? That shouldn't matter, though. – Dennis Williamson Jul 20 '12 at 19:28
Is dir on an NFS mount, by any chance? I'm picturing the NFS client issuing the cp request before the NFS server has finished deleting dir. No idea if that's plausible. – chepner Jul 20 '12 at 19:43
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migrated from stackoverflow.com Jul 20 '12 at 22:58

2 Answers

up vote 2 down vote

Solution Without Explanation

I'm not 100% sure why this happens, although I suspect it has something to do with how or when Bash is expanding the arguments to cp. However, it's easy enough to fix: just add the -a flag. For example:

rm -rf dir; cp -a dir2 dir

This performs properly on my system, and reports no errors. As proof:

$ set -x; rm -rf dir; cp -a dir2 dir; ls
+ rm -rf dir
+ cp -a dir2 dir
dir  dir2
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Do you get an error without -a? What happens if you use -d instead? Is dir2 a symlink? – Dennis Williamson Jul 20 '12 at 19:26
@DennisWilliamson Yes. On my system, it gives a different error: cp: omitting directory `dir2' even when rm is hashed to /bin/rm. Ubuntu 11.10, Bash 4.2.10(1)-release. The -d flag gives the same error, as it should, since I'm testing with real directories. The -a flag definitely fixes it, though. – CodeGnome Jul 20 '12 at 19:31
up vote -2 down vote

If you want to execute command2 after command1 (only if command1 completes successfully), then do:

command1 && command2
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