Controlled access cp

[Grant R. Guenther]

I'm preparing a spec for a small systems programming exercise.  The basic
idea is to make a program that behaves like cp except that it will bypass
the normal mode-based protection and honour, instead, .access files
in the source and destination directories.  These files would contain
access control data in the form of patterns that must match the user's
id, access type (rw) and file name.  Clearly, this requires some careful
thinking about the loopholes that it might introduce in particular
environments - that is part of the exercise.

While comments about the cleverness or stupidity of the scheme are welcome,
my question concerns the attribution of this idea.  The idea of access
control lists is widely known.  I seem to recall having seen a brief
reference to a unix tool of the sort described above some time ago.  Can
anyone refresh my memory ?  References to program sources or articles in
journals or magazines are welcome.

Grant Guenther      grant at ramsey.cs.laurentian.ca
Math & C.S., Laurentian U., Sudbury, Canada