Re: Bad cp -a behaviour

[Philip Rowlands]

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Tim Waugh wrote:

>Thinking about it, it must be order-specific.  But here's the output I
>get:
>
>`2/d/3' -> `1/d/3'
>`2/d/2' -> `1/d/2'
>`2/d/1' -> `1/d/1'
>`2/d/4' -> `1/d/4'

OK, so this is a filesystem-dependent issue when using --recursive on
source and destination directories which both contain hard links.

I don't know the specs to which GNU cp adheres well enough, but I'd be
surprised if they mandate a sort routine for recursive copying.

Conversely, it's particularly confusing of cp to throw up its hands and
claim "undefined" in this scenario. I'd think the cp_hash code probably
has a role to play here, but I'm not sure I'm qualified to start hacking
it around. Any AUTHORS in the list??


Cheers,
Phil