hi,guys
when i read the cp manual, found that have a --copy-contents option ,
in the manual it says :It is usually a mistake to use this option, as
it normally has undesirable effects on special files like FIFOs and
the ones typically found in the /dev directory. I wonder why should
remain this option since it always cause mistake just as the manual
says. which scenario should use it ?
thanks

enjoyfate******.com wrote:

> when i read the cp manual, found that have a --copy-contents option ,
> in the manual it says :It is usually a mistake to use this option, as
> it normally has undesirable effects on special files like FIFOs and
> the ones typically found in the /dev directory. I wonder why should
> remain this option since it always cause mistake just as the manual
> says. which scenario should use it ?

A common thing to do is to not remove options, as you may break old
scripts (for example someone wrote a shell script in the mid 70's and
the company still uses the script but no one anymore knows about it,
think what would happen if the whole system would go down for a option
has been removed).

It's used when you copy normal files which are inside a directory (which
in own turn may have other directories inside itself with normal files),
cp -R --copy-contents directoryname /newlocation/newname

But the option ain't that commonly used.

--

//Aho

On Sat, 14 Jun 2008 08:04:33 -0700, enjoyfate wrote:

> hi,guys
> when i read the cp manual, found that have a --copy-contents option , in
> the manual it says :It is usually a mistake to use this option, as it
> normally has undesirable effects on special files like FIFOs and the
> ones typically found in the /dev directory. I wonder why should remain
> this option since it always cause mistake just as the manual says. which
> scenario should use it ?
> thanks

I don't see in the manual where it says it always causes mistakes.
Sometimes you may have a special file in a folder and you want to copy
the contents of the special file. Maybe you have a disk device in a
folder, and you want to copy the entire disk. The manual I read says it
will have problems with some special files, such as FIFOs, /dev/console/
and /dev/zero. "--copy-contents" is for when you know what special files
are in a folder, and you know you want to copy their contents.

stonerfish