diff -Nrup fileutils-4.1-2.old/src/copy.c fileutils-4.1-2.new/src/copy.c
--- fileutils-4.1-2.old/src/copy.c	2001-06-25 23:42:46.000000000 +0100
+++ fileutils-4.1-2.new/src/copy.c	2004-02-21 17:34:32.742569600 +0000
@@ -197,6 +197,14 @@ copy_reg (const char *src_path, const ch
   source_desc = open (src_path, O_RDONLY);
   if (source_desc < 0)
     {
+#ifndef __CYGWIN__
+      /* The following comment is incorrect.
+	 The code that would have deferred the same-name check until
+	 here is commented out in same_file_ok.
+	 So in most environments, errno == ENOENT will never happen. 
+	 In Cygwin, this happens because of the different
+	 handling of .exe in stat and open. 
+         The error message for non-ENOENT errors is probably better. */
       /* If SRC_PATH doesn't exist, then chances are good that the
 	 user did something like this `cp --backup foo foo': and foo
 	 existed to start with, but copy_internal renamed DST_PATH
@@ -205,6 +213,7 @@ copy_reg (const char *src_path, const ch
 	error (0, 0, _("%s and %s are the same file"),
 	       quote_n (0, src_path), quote_n (1, dst_path));
       else
+#endif
 	error (0, errno, _("cannot open %s for reading"), quote (src_path));
 
       return -1;