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Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 12:37:06 -0500
From: Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org>
To: David Schultz <das@FreeBSD.org>
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cc: standards@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: Patch for cp(1)
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On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 12:22:07 -0500
David Schultz <das@freebsd.org> wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 02, 2005, Bruce Evans wrote:
> > On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, Garrett Wollman wrote:
> > 
> > ><<On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 20:43:02 +1000 (EST), Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> 
> > >said:
> > >
> > >[cp -r]
> > >>I think we don't need to keep it except for POSIX compatibility.
> > >
> > >>New programs just shouldn't use cp -r.  Old programs that use cp -r
> > >>shouldn't have its behaviour changed.
> > >
> > >I'm more concerned about humans.
> [...]
> > -r is the same as -R under Linux (linux_base_8), and it isn't even 
> > deprecated
> > in cp --help at least, so it won't go away, and fingers will be trained to
> > use it in preference to -R, for at least another 20 years.
> 
> Isn't that an argument *for* Tom's patch?  In any case, I think
> the argument about old programs is bogus, because there are
> undoubtedly more scripts that assume the Linux behavior than there
> are pre-4.2BSD scripts out there.

Yes, that is an argument for my patch.  :)

> 
> Furthermore, are there situations where -r and -R differ such that
> -r would behave reasonably?  If it's the case that every time
> someone uses -r they really mean -R, then simply eliminating -r is
> worse than making it an alias for -R.

I agree that completely removing -r would be bad right now.

-- 
Tom Rhodes