Unix already has "attributes"...

[Ed Gould]

In article <2636 at sun.uucp> gnu at sun.uucp (John Gilmore) writes:
>Unix is not pristine about this either.  Why do you have to copy
>executables with "cp" rather than "cat" or "dd"?  They won't execute if
>you cat them...because the file permissions ("attributes" of the
>original) are specifically propagated by code in "cp", but not by
>"cat".

The reason is that cp is the utility to copy files.  Neither cat nor dd
is, even though it's possible to use them to make copies.  Cat takes
named files and/or standard input and places the catenation of them on
standard output.  Dd is a data manipulation program.  There's no reason
to assume that what comes out of either has any obvious relation to an
executable that goes in.

-- 
Ed Gould                    mt Xinu, 2910 Seventh St., Berkeley, CA  94710  USA
{ucbvax,decvax}!mtxinu!ed   +1 415 644 0146

"A man of quality is not threatened by a woman of equality."