make scp more script-capable

[Alexander Kurz]

Hi,
 here's a proposal of a new ssh/scp-feature:
 -------------------------------------------------------
 please implement a timeout with non-zero error-returncode on 
 "Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?"
 -------------------------------------------------------

My situation:
 recently I have implemented a cronjob
 that is using scp. Due to organizational
 reasons, the hostname of the remote
 machine changed. The problem that came up
 at this point, is this the message came up:

akurz at dev157-34:~ > ssh someuser at somehost.mydomanin.de
The authenticity of host 'someuser at somehost.mydomanin.de' can't be
established.
RSA key fingerprint is 00:12:4a:fc:33:80:71:70:4b:bb:e4:9d:16:c7:30:62.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? 

BUT: i did not see the message, becaus i have
 discarded it via
 scp someuser at somehost.mydomanin.de:~/somefiles* . >/dev/null
 So the script hung whithout complaining.
 If there was some timeout-functionality,
 i could easily check scp's returncode and
 create a nice error-message

 regards, Alexander Kurz,   akur at qsc.de