[wplug] Linux behavior/implementation question

Brandon Kuczenski brandon at 301south.net
Thu Mar 31 21:51:14 EST 2005


On Thu, 31 Mar 2005, Tom Rhodes wrote:

> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 17:22:25 -0500
> Eric Cooper <ecc at cmu.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 04:56:51PM -0500, Tom Rhodes wrote:
>>> My patch for FreeBSD (and intended patch for Sun) would make the
>>> -r flag a synonym for -R.  This removes the code for -r, leaving
>>> the option in tact.
>>>
>>> Since this is an implementation defined option, I'm guessing that
>>> Linux works the same way and want people to prove this.
>>
>> cp (from GNU coreutils 5.2.1) already treats -r and -R as synonyms.
>
> Ok, so real Unix differentiates.  Linux does the right thing
> here, good.
>
> My only worry was that the user would either:
>
> 1: Expect everthing, including special files to be copied when
>   in fact they would not.
>
> 2: The system would hang when it encountered a special file with
>   no indication to the user as to why.
>
> Thank you very much!
>

I'm glad you found an answer to your question.

Perhaps it would be valuable or informative -- it would for me, at least 
-- to explain what mkfifo does and why it's special?  The manual page 
doesn't seem to be useful if you don't already know what it's talking 
about, and web searches turn up irrelevancies or copies of the man page.

Or if not, I'm sure it's not too important for my day-to-day activity.

-Brandon



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