Re: [gentoo-user] Migrating hard drives

[Dirk Heinrichs]

Am Samstag, 20. Dezember 2008 20:45:27 schrieb Joerg Schilling:
> Dirk Heinrichs <dirk.heinrichs@××××××.de> wrote:
> > Am Samstag, 20. Dezember 2008 18:44:53 schrieb Joerg Schilling:
> > > "cp" neither has a "-a" nor a "-x" option. Are you talking abut "gcp"?
> >
> > Sure he is. This is a Linux mailing list. We don't care which options are
> > missing in Solaris' version of cp ;-)
>
> I was not talking about the Solaris cp but about "cp", the way it is in the
> standard.

Just compared the man pages of cp of the three major Unix vendors (SunOS, HP-
UX, AIX). They're all different. If there is a standard, it's not implemented 
very well accross different platforms.

> The problem with giving unspecific advise based on non-standard behavior is
> that people may later use the same command line on other platforms and
> fail......

Well, the only cp that can be installed on all of the above platforms is gcp 
ok, granted BSD cp would be another option, but I doubt that there are 
packages available for all those platforms), so if you want consistent 
behaviour, install GNU cp (and its friends). That's what I do at work, where I 
have to cope with a heterogenous environment consisting of HP-UX, Linux, SunOS 
and Windows. Only by using the GNU variants of the Unix tools I can use our 
self-written (shell) scripts on either platform.

So the question is: What's better, following an (eventually minimalistic) 
standard or defining the standard yourself?

OTOH, a Linux-only user wont even care. He has gcp, that's his "standard".

Bye...

	Dirk