Re: cp -p

[Noel L Yap]

address@hidden on 2000.11.03 12:29:39
>> I feel that "cp -p" should not ignore the umask (although I see that
>> this is the behaviour of Solaris's cp, too) because:
>
>I disagree.  I believe the behavior is proper when specifying the -p
>option.  Check out the online UNIX98 docs:
>
>  http://www.unix-systems.org/single_unix_specification_v2/

I understand what the specs say, I just disagree with them.

>>    Even if the user chmod's the file(s) afterwards, there is still a
>>    window of possibly excessive permissions.
>>    Users who wish to have the current behaviour can set their umask
>>    before the cp, then reset it afterwards.
>
>But the reverse is also true with the current implementation.  User's
>that desire umask to be respected can avoid specifying the -p option.

Not exactly, specifying -p will preserve timestamps, too, but I see you realized
that below.

>But perhaps your request is really that you want a way to preserve
>only timestamps on the file and no other attributes and the present
>set of options does not provide a way to do that?  Something like
>--preserve-timestamps or some such?

Yes, in my rush to complain :-) I had forgotten to suggest such an extension in
options.  I was thinking something more like:

     cp --preserve=timestamp,owner,group,mode

where any of "timestamp", "owner", "group", or "mode" may or may not be
specified.  The default behaviour of "cp --preserve" would be the way it is now
(ie preserve everything that can be).

Since I didn't know how to make such a code change (ie have optional arguments
to long options) nor did I have time to learn, I settled for changing my own
private copy to do what I want (I love open source ;-)

Noel



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