#217165 coreutils: mv foo FOO: `foo' and `FOO' are the same file

Package:
coreutils
Source:
coreutils
Description:
GNU core utilities
Submitter:
Eemeli Kantola
Date:
2014-08-28 06:24:04 UTC
Severity:
minor
#217165#5
Date:
2003-10-22 22:55:21 UTC
From:
To:
#217165#10
Date:
2003-10-23 01:10:02 UTC
From:
To:
I don't see this as an issue.

Mike Stone
#217165#15
Date:
2004-11-21 22:42:20 UTC
From:
To:
I just spent quite a long time trying to figure out why I was getting
the error mentioned in the subject line.  It was only after I found
that someone had already reported this that I realized that the
problem was a case-insensitive filesystem and not a serious problem
with mv.

If the behaviour can't be fixed, at least the error message should be
more helpful; at the moment, it makes it appear that it's mv that's
broken, rather than the filesystem...
#217165#20
Date:
2004-11-22 08:29:38 UTC
From:
To:
Christopher Allen <cpcallen@ruah.dyndns.org> wrote:

Thanks for reporting that.

As for changing mv's behavior, what would you have preferred
it do in that case?

It's easy to detect this problem in your (simple) case,
but not as easy in general.  Even if someone had already
written a clean patch, I'm not convinced it'd be worth the
added code (increased complexity, maintenance burden) to
give a better diagnostic upon misuse in combination with
a case-insensitive file system.

But then again, maybe someone can come up with a small,
clean patch to implement this...
#217165#27
Date:
2014-08-28 06:21:55 UTC
From:
To:
So, after 10 years, this is still not fixed?

root@loom:/mnt/db/projects/Falling Fanny/Falling Fanny/www/js# mv
app.coffee App.coffee
mv: `app.coffee' and `App.coffee' are the same file

How am I supposed to rename this file? I don't care about the explanations
given so far, because the renaming is clearly necessary in my situation,
and it is also clear that it is technically possible, because it works
through Windows Explorer.

So, what's up with this?