Re: [PATCH] adding two new options to 'cp'

At 12:07 PM +0200 8/1/06, Ivan Voras wrote:
Peter Jeremy wrote:

Note that it isn's possible to accurately distinguish
between a block of NULs and a hole in the file through
the filesystem. The only way to accurately copy a
sparse file is with dump/restore.

Hence the need for an explicit switch.

The point is not that you need an explicit switch, the
point is that you have to add a lot of code to 'cp' for
'cp' to do the job correctly. You are changing the
nature of how the command works. I very much doubt you
can implement that *correctly* in a mere 160 bytes of
additional object code!

Note:
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15348 [date] /bin/cp
-r-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 44288 [date] /sbin/dump
-r-xr-xr-x 2 root wheel 58736 [date] /sbin/restore

I realize a lot of these decisions are somewhat subjective.
"One person's feature is another person's bloat". But in
the case of this specific example, I (personally) would
not want 'cp' to implement every detail which is already
handled by dump/restore.

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = drosehn@xxxxxxx
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@xxxxxxxxxxx
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY; USA
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