From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: Maarit Maliniemi <maaritm@mac.com>
Message-ID: <maaritm-0507021102560001@192.168.0.2>
References: <3ba2a45af5c572e7280e465acb3a805a@plan9.bell-labs.com>
Subject: Re: [9fans] dumb question
Date: Fri,  5 Jul 2002 09:07:52 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: c2e043b4-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

In article <3ba2a45af5c572e7280e465acb3a805a@plan9.bell-labs.com>,
9fans@cse.psu.edu wrote:

> > Perhaps someone could explain why cp doesn't work recursively (without
> > an option) when given a directory as a first argument.
> 
> Because running cp that way would probably happen more often by mistake
> than by intention, and it could damage a lot of files very fast before the
> user noticed.
> 
> -rob

since the subject of damage has been raised i would like to mention that i
have managed to damage tar files by using 'tar cf tarfile afile' (the
intention was 'tar xf tarfile afile').
tar would be less dangerous if split into two. see inferno.

i have also damaged whole file trees by doing
'tar cf adir - | {cd /missspelled/dir; tar xf -}'
IMHO, it is less dangerous using 'cp -R'.


bengt