On Sun, 2018-03-11 at 19:59 +1100, Stephen Morris wrote:
On 11/3/18 1:09 pm, Ed Greshko wrote:
On 03/11/18 09:24, Stephen Morris wrote:
I can't find the documentation any more, but I have found documentation on how to use copy the create the target as a hard link or as a soft link. It is possible I have incorrectly remembered what I had read, or it is possible over time that the standard copy functionality has changed and now you have to explicitly specify that you want that functionality.
From "man cp"
-l, --link hard link files instead of copying -s, --symbolic-link make symbolic links instead of copying[egreshko@meimei tmp]$ ll -i source 11574505 -rw-rw-r--. 1 egreshko egreshko 14 Mar 11 10:06 source
[egreshko@meimei tmp]$ cp -s source source-s
[egreshko@meimei tmp]$ ll -i source* 11574505 -rw-rw-r--. 1 egreshko egreshko 14 Mar 11 10:06 source 11573763 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 egreshko egreshko 6 Mar 11 10:07 source-s -> source
[egreshko@meimei tmp]$ cp -l source source-h
[egreshko@meimei tmp]$ ll -i source* 11574505 -rw-rw-r--. 2 egreshko egreshko 14 Mar 11 10:06 source 11574505 -rw-rw-r--. 2 egreshko egreshko 14 Mar 11 10:06 source-h 11573763 lrwxrwxrwx. 1 egreshko egreshko 6 Mar 11 10:07 source-s -> source
So, this is probably what you're recalling
It could be Ed, I remember the documentation differently, so I could be not remembering it correctly, so I'll keep quiet now.
The original version of 'cp' (by which I mean the version going back to the early days of Unix) didn't have any options. It simply copied the file contents to a different file. There was no question of using links, hard or soft (in fact symbolic links hadn't been invented).
poc