cp: -r or -R?(movq.de) |
cp: -r or -R?(movq.de) |
> Historic versions of the cp utility had an -r option. This implementation supports that option; however, its use is strongly discouraged, as it does not correctly copy special files, symbolic links or FIFOs.
The snippet of code makes it very clear what the difference is, no?
flag_copy_as_regular = 1 VS flag_copy_as_regular = 0, where regular would be a "regular" and not "special" file.
Feels like this would be exactly the kind of thing they would get wrong. Fur exactly, the training set isn't trained to know the context of execution (FreeBSD vs macos vs Linux), right?
appearently i am not :') never knew there was -r
Sprite 2.077 pc386
Welcome to Sprite
root@cherimoya [1] # cp --version
GNU fileutils 3.9
root@cherimoya [2] # cp --help | grep recurs
-r copy recursively, non-directories as files
-R, --recursive copy directories recursively
root@cherimoya [3] #
Not sure why you wouldn't want to preserve timestamps, links, etc. by default.
It's also not even completely covering the weird case of -r and -R for the cp command. On HP-UX, for example, the twain were different, but not in the way that they were in old GNU Core Utilities. That would be too easy. (-:
The AIX manual for cp explains its difference between -r and -R:
* https://ibm.com/docs/en/aix/7.1.0?topic=c-cp-command
Illumos also treats the two differently, but in a subtly different way:
The "metadata is atomically copied" part would support very nicely the usual text editor's idiom of rename(2)ing a temporary file over the source after fully writing it out — you still need to accurately replicate the permissions and extended attributes. And just as shells are important enough programs to have fork(2) almost exactly suited for them, it would make sense to have copy(2), suited for the text editors.
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/82485/when-wouldnt-...
It seems that recursive by default would have been much more intuitive.
Yes, seriously. When you read about the supposed evils of cat -v from the Unix nostalgia people, remember that it was the same people who gave cat its -v option who also gave cp its -r option, in 4.2BSD.
It took over half a decade to percolate out of the BSD world, too. AT&T Unix System 5 did not have an -r option to cp. Here's Brandon S. Allbery explaining in 1987 how one copies directories on AT&T Unix System 5 Releases 2/3 by combining find and cpio -p:
* https://groups.google.com/g/comp.unix.questions/c/XiumTgkcYR...
Originally we read directories as raw byte streams and liked it, you know. (-:
Also, I always have this vague fear that I'll rsync in the wrong direction, or accidentally blow away unrelated files in rsync's efforts to fully synchronize two directories (can't remember if this is a valid concern).
I'm sure these concerns would go away if I used it regularly, but I just don't. ‘cp' or ’scp’ almost always meet my needs.
Kinda like the way people are probably right that I should learn to use ’awk’, but I just can't muster the motivation.
And the received wisdom about long options in the BSDs is a quarter of a century out of date. When the BSDs gained a getopt_long() in their C libraries thanks to Klausner and Baron, long options quietly started appearing. This process has been gradually and quietly on-going for the whole of the 21st century.
However, I should note that possibly the first company to invent what you describe was Microsoft.
Novell Netware 386 had an NCOPY command which invoked a Netware extension to the DOS API that told the server to perform the entire copy on the server.
But even earlier, OS/2 1.x had a proper DosCopy() system call. Since it could be passed down to the installable filesystem drivers for intra-volume copies, something like the Netware client for OS/2 could in theory turn it into the same protocol call that did server-side copies. There was a NET COPY command in LAN Manager (and LAN Server, if memory serves) that did the same optimization.
Eh, when fork was invented, most (virtual) memory systems did not have the first clue about copy-on-write either. And honestly, it's really not that difficult to support — it's essentially hard links, just with slightly different semantics.
Is it the case in another country to have a localized name for that?
It is common for brands to localize their names. E.g. Axe (the deodorant) in some countries is branded as Lynx.
"NextBSD" was first released in 2015:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextBSD
Over a decade after macOS/Mac OS X was initially released:
> macOS (previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a proprietary Unix[7][8] operating system, derived from OPENSTEP for Mach and FreeBSD, which has been marketed and developed by Apple since 2001.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacOS
> Darwin is the core Unix-like operating system of macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS, iPadOS, audioOS, visionOS, and bridgeOS. It previously existed as an independent open-source operating system, first released by Apple in 2000. It is composed of code derived from NeXTSTEP, FreeBSD[3] and other BSD operating systems,[7] Mach, and […]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
I remember reading release notes for FreeBSD in the '00s and seeing the exact same lines in the release notes for earlier versions of OS X.
macOS isn't "Unix-like"; it's an Open Group certified UNIX™ [1].
[1]: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3725.htm
https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/issues/119#issuecommen...