-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to Zak on 12/4/2006 4:45 PM: > > OK, but the -R (or maybe -r), which is I guess what I really meant, > might be specified by POSIX. If only the standard were free I'd have a > read and see.
For cp, both -r and -R are documented by POSIX, although -r is left unspecified (its traditional behavior on pipes and devices was less than desirable). And POSIX _is_ free - you can register to become a member of the Austin group at no cost, and browse the 2004 corrections to the 2001 edition of POSIX online: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/nframe.html And yes, GNU 'cp -R' complies with POSIX: http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/cp.html > >> It should not matter whether you spell the source as 'src/.' or the >> shorter 'src', since both spellings name the same hierarchy. > > That's my point. I suspect it shouldn't matter, but it does. If you > say "src" or "src/" you get one behaviour, but if you say "src/." you > get another, despite the fact that they name the same directory. Indeed, POSIX requires the following behavior (well, POSIX doesn't require - -v, but it is useful for seeing what -R does): $ mkdir demo demo/src demo/dest1 demo/dest2 demo/dest3 $ cd demo $ touch src/a src/.a $ cp -vR src dest1 `src' -> `dest1/src' `src/.a' -> `dest1/src/.a' `src/a' -> `dest1/src/a' $ cp -vR src/ dest2 `src/' -> `dest2/src' `src/.a' -> `dest2/src/.a' `src/a' -> `dest2/src/a' $ cp -vR src/. dest3 `src/./.a' -> `dest3/./.a' `src/./a' -> `dest3/./a' The key here is that POSIX talks about "each file in the file hierarchy rooted in each source_file", with the destination being "the concatenation of target, a slash character, and the pathname of the file relative to the directory containing source_file". The directory containing "src" or "src/" is ., but the directory containing "src/." is src. - -- Life is short - so eat dessert first! Eric Blake [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFFdXny84KuGfSFAYARApKFAJwOo+122PxfjDfOiy1Wl8iEiTQAEQCffq3I pkEMdvtK55fzMRbgak+q+KY= =8XYJ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
