Autzoo.1503
net.bugs.v7
utcsrgv!utzoo!henry
Wed Mar 24 19:16:53 1982
cp misfeature
The command "cp <DIRECTORY> <FILE>" will work, but does not yield a very
intelligible file as a result.  Most naive users don't really grasp the
notion that directories are just a special kind of file, and are confused
by the appearance of this strange little gibberish file.  We found this
a headache, and since the command seems singularly useless, we added
the following code just after the assignment to "mode" in cp.c/copy():

       if ((mode&S_IFMT) == S_IFDIR) {
               close(fold);
               fprintf(stderr, "cp: %s is a directory -- ignored.\n", from);
               return(1);
       }

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