Detection of identical file doesn't work for localhost:

[Damien Miller]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Christian Kurz wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I had to notice that scp is able to detect if a file is copied to itself
> if you use "scp foo /path/to/foo" or "scp foo .". If you type in "scp
> foo localhost:/path/to/foo" it will still overwrite the old version of
> foo. Is it possible to change this behaviour of scp? 
> 
> I only had a quick glance at scp.c and I'm also not a C coder, only
> learning C right now, so please give me some hints if I'm wrong. You use
> the function "colon" in 984 to check if you should to a remote copy or a
> local copy. I think it would be possible to add a check to it to see if
> the name of the remote host will be localhost and then also use the
> function "tolocal" for doing a local copy instead of calling "toremote".
> What do you guys think? Would you please add this feature?

This has come up before, IIRC we decided not to put such a check in
because there are so many ways to refer to the local host 
(localhost, hostname(s), ip addresses, etc) that such a check would 
cover a small range of the cases.

OTOH a patch to make scp write to a temp file and then rename it as the
final step may make more sense and achieve a better result.

> P.S.: Would somebody please change s/debain/debian/ in the ChangeLog to
> fix my email-address? Thanks

Done.

-d

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