Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!teknowledge-vaxc!sri-unix!quintus!ok
From: ok@quintus.uucp (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: directory copying with cp; broken?
Message-ID: <522@quintus.UUCP>
Date: 12 Oct 88 00:43:04 GMT
References: <40@ausonics.OZ> <30506@bbn.COM> <506@quintus.UUCP> <10073@yavin.uucp>
Sender: news@quintus.UUCP
Reply-To: ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Organization: Quintus Computer Systems, Inc.
Lines: 12

In article <10073@yavin.uucp> mike_s@sun.UUCP (Mike Sullivan) writes:
>In article <506@quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP I wrote:
>>Are you sure about that?  In both SunOS 3.2 and SunOS 4.0,
>>	% cat .
>>	cat: read error: Is a directory
>I am running SunOS 4.0, and if I 'cat .' I get the contents of the
>directory (file names, etc.), not a read error. "wc ." also works.

I did actually _test_ my statement, but it never occurred to me to try
it on a file server.  Apparently directories in an "nfs"-mounted file
system look empty, but directories in a "4.2"-mounted file system can
still be read.