From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" Message-ID: <3D1A8F7D.34AD24C5@null.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: Subject: Re: [9fans] dumb question Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 09:17:32 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: bb506976-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 "rob pike, esq." wrote: > Whether you cp or tar, you must read the files from one tree and write > them to another. But with twin tars (y'all), there is encoding and decoding (aka format translation) going on for the attribute info, which does seem like a waste of cycles. There is frequently, at least in my end of the universe, need for directory hierarchy walking for a variety of purposes. The old Unix tools "find" and "xargs" aren't very satisfactory, but at least they exist. I guess "ls -R" would almost work as a file tree walker (as input to some shell procedure), except for its irregular output format and its apparent nonexistence under Plan 9. Do you guys work mostly with flat file hierarchies or what?