[clue-tech] mtime isn't

[David L. Anselmi]

David L. Willson wrote:
> I might argue that this behavior is non-intuitive without
> justification.  Now, I understand why it behaves this way from a
> technical standpoint, but I still don't understand why this behavior
> was selected to be the default.

Sigh.  You can read the Unix Hater's Guide to explain why this and the 
entire Unix design were done as stupidly as possible (seriously, except 
that blaming Unix for Sendmail bugs is a stretch--that they mostly make).

I was going to say that the default behavior is what makes sense to the 
kernel, since cp doesn't go out of it's way to do anything other than 
make the system calls needed.  When Unix (or POSIX, maybe?) was invented 
there weren't naive users with naive expectations of what made sense. 
(No, really--read-only doesn't mean you can't delete the file.  I don't 
have to give you write permission on the file for you to replace it 
(selinux and ACLs withstanding).  It makes sense the same way a clutch 
makes sense, just not if you've never driven a stick.)

But, the cp source is some 3000+ lines so you're right.  They should 
have got the default behavior right before they started on the second 
thousand.

Dave