bug#81377: mv -Tn suceeds if target directory exists, no error printed

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On 08/07/2026 13:51, Florian Weimer via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:
> * Florian Weimer via:
> 
>> Based on the documentation, I would have expected an error in this case.
>>
>> mkdir a a/1 b b/2
>> mv -Tn a b
>>
>> Exit status is zero.  The only relevant system call in the strace output
>> is this one:
>>
>> renameat2(AT_FDCWD, "a", AT_FDCWD, "b", RENAME_NOREPLACE) = -1 EEXIST (File exists)

Right the documentation got out of sync a bit.

We changed the behavior to exiting with failure in:
https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/7a69df889
Though there was push back on that due to scripts breaking,
so it was reverted in:
https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/9907b6f5d

However I failed to update the mv -n info docs accordingly.

In some quick testing here I see mv -n silently fails on solaris,
but (like Linux) silently skips on FreeBSD.
So we should deprecate (non POSIX) -n for mv as we've
already done for cp.

I'll push the attached to address this documentation issue.

>>
>> Seen with: coreutils-9.7-9.fc43.x86_64
> 
> I see that there is a hint in the -n description that the exit status
> may not be what users expects.  But it means that this claim in the
> manual is slightly misleading:
> 
> | However, if ‘mv -T /tmp/source /tmp/dest’ succeeds, there is no
> | question that ‘/tmp/source’ was renamed to ‘/tmp/dest’.

The above is OK I think, as it doesn't mention -n.

Marking this as done.

thanks,
Padraig
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