Patch for cp(1)
Tom Rhodes
trhodes at FreeBSD.org
Fri Apr 1 09:37:31 PST 2005
On Fri, 1 Apr 2005 12:22:07 -0500
David Schultz <das at 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 at 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
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