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From: jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson)
Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: Unix already has "attributes"...
Message-ID: <131@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Aug-85 07:46:40 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.131
Posted: Mon Aug 26 07:46:40 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 27-Aug-85 06:23:39 EDT
References: <3398@decwrl.UUCP> <2000018@ccvaxa> <1314@eagle.UUCP> <2636@sun.uucp> <452@mtxinu.UUCP>
Reply-To: jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 12

In article <452@mtxinu.UUCP> ed@mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) writes:
>>...Why do you have to copy
>>executables with "cp" rather than "cat" or "dd"?
>
>The reason is that cp is the utility to copy files. . . .

Precisely.  A special utility is needed because files are not the same
things as pipes or devices (yes, I'd like to be able to do things like
``exec("/dev/ttyh3")'' to upload a program from my micro!).  One way 
in which they differ is that they have some special attributes.  Not 
many, and the list of attributes is not user-extensible.