Question

I’m making a script in bash that requires files to be copied. I tried using the cp command with the -n flag set but I found out that on some systems the -n flag is not available.

cp: invalid option -- n

I want this script to be portable enough so that users won’t be required to update their cp.

What the -n flag does is copy only files from the source that are not already in the destination without prompting.

Is there an alternative to this?

Answer 1

If the -i flag is available, yes n | cp -i ... should achieve the same as cp -n ....