Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2016 03:22:31 +1100 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: "Steve O'Hara-Smith" <steve@sohara.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: A request for cp flag Message-ID: <20161019031149.K6806@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <mailman.91.1476792002.89621.freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> References: <mailman.91.1476792002.89621.freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
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In freebsd-questions Digest, Vol 646, Issue 2, Message: 12
On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 19:38:41 +0100 Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org> wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2016 15:59:10 +0100
> Matthew Seaman <matthew@FreeBSD.org> wrote:
>
> > You're not going to get anyone to change the behaviour of a core command
> > like cp(1) I'm afraid. For all that you dislike the behaviour when
> > copying a directory path that ends in '/' there will be many, many more
> > people that have written scripts that depend on that exact behaviour and
> > will be exceedingly peeved if those scripts stop working.
>
> Adding a -r flag wouldn't break anything at least until POSIX adds
> one that does something else and then there'd be a decision to make, for
> that reason I doubt anyone would entertain a new single letter option to cp.
Not to pick on you in particular, Steve, but it seems nobody's noticed
that FreeBSD cp(1) already supports an -r flag, albeit with deprecation.
COMPATIBILITY
Historic versions of the cp utility had a -r option. This implementation
supports that option, however, its behavior is different from historical
FreeBSD behavior. Use of this option is strongly discouraged as the
behavior is implementation-dependent. In FreeBSD, -r is a synonym for
-RL and works the same unless modified by other flags. Historical
implementations of -r differ as they copy special files as normal files
while recreating a hierarchy.
cheers, Ian
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