mjhjmtu

With cp I can:

$ mkdir q
$ touch s
$ cp -T s q # I need same effect with scp and/or rsync.
cp: cannot overwrite directory 'q' with non-directory
$ ls q

How do I get same effect in one command with scp and/or rsync? I.e. When target is directory I want it to exit with non-zero exit code without actual file transfer. I don't want file s to be placed in directory q.

Of course, it can be checked separately. The question is how to do that in one single command. Particularly, for the sake of concurrency.

This will abort if the remote directory in question exists:

if ! ssh user@host "[[ -d /path/to/directory ]]"; then
 # do your scp or rsync
else
 echo "Remote location is a directory. Aborting." 1&>2
 exit 1
fi

If you want to make this into a one-liner, then:

ssh user@host "[[ -d /path/to/directory ]]" || <<scp or rsync>>

As an option:

ssh remote-server 'cat > /tmp/asd' < /tmp/qwe

Not a parameter though.

Example:

$ ssh localhost 'cat > /tmp/oi' < /tmp/qwe ; echo $?
Authenticated to localhost ([::1]:22).
bash: /tmp/oi: Is a directory
Transferred: sent 2832, received 2548 bytes, in 0.0 seconds
Bytes per second: sent 60414.8, received 54356.2
1
$ ssh localhost 'cat > /tmp/asd' < /tmp/qwe ; echo $? 
Authenticated to localhost ([::1]:22).
Transferred: sent 2832, received 2496 bytes, in 0.0 seconds
Bytes per second: sent 62499.8, received 55084.5
0
$ ls -l /tmp/qwe,asd,oi 
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george 4 Apr 19 21:21 /tmp/asd
-rw-r--r-- 1 george george 4 Apr 19 21:19 /tmp/qwe

/tmp/oi:
total 0