chas@gtss.UUCP (Charles Cleveland) (05/27/87)
In article <10038@decwrl.DEC.COM> tenny@z.dec.com writes: > >Charles Cleveland @ gatech writes: > >>This is not a feature, it is a bug :-). Virtually nobody does it this > >Since you seem to know that nobody uses date preserving copy programs, >would you care to tell the rest of us what the good reason is? > >I agree the date preservation should be an option, but I find the ability >to preserve dates extremely useful in file management. > >Dave Tenny ................... IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT ...................... Let us pause at this time to give thanks to Jeff Lydiatt, who took much time and effort to design Cp, write it, debug it, and then present to us a program which is what it claims to be. He has done this from the noblest of motives, namely to help rid AmigaLand of BCPL. I would not want him to think that his efforts were unappreciated just because I have criticized one small aspect of his work. A round of applause please: () () () () () () () .................................................................. If I knew that nobody cared to use date preserving copy programs, I would not have suggested it be kept as an option. I honestly forgot that MSDOS copy preserves file timestamps, or I blocked out the experience of working with it. Clearly many people will think by their experience that MSDOS's behaviour is the natural one :-). As for reasons, Mike Meyers has touched on enough of my personal ones, esp. the way I use make, to discourage me from wasting bytes on another list. Clearly not everyone who likes Copy to update file timestamps is braindead either. On reflection, I have decided that an option is a bad idea, in spite of the recommendation that it be done that way in the Bugs section of Sun's cp manual page (& probably in BSD's). I have a better idea. Let's have two Copy's. One, called say 'Copy', that updates file timestamps, and one, called say 'Cp', that preserves them. We will not only have avoided creeping featurism but everyone could still have a version they like. Now if we could only get someone to write Copy ;-). -- ---- Insert in above as required: ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) Charles Cleveland EDU: chas@ss.physics.gatech.edu Georgia Tech School of Physics UUCP: ...!{backbone}!gatech!gtss!chas Atlanta, GA 30332