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List:       busybox
Subject:    busybox cp -R sub sub
From:       S H <sh4d0wstr1f3 () yahoo ! com>
Date:       2007-08-22 13:37:35
Message-ID: 179566.73981.qm () web50406 ! mail ! re2 ! yahoo ! com
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I've been following bug 0001412 ("cp -a allows copy of a directory into self"), and \
was wondering if anyone on the list could shed light on what problems were introduced \
by Chris Larson's r8517 that led Erik Andersen to revert it in r8547. In a list \
message (http://www.busybox.net/lists/busybox/2004-February/010884.html)
andersen indicated that the change caused many problems, but didn't specify what they \
were.

The test case:

% busybox-cp [ -R | -a ] sub sub 

Results in a repeatedly created subdirectory hierarchy until getcwd(2) runs out of \
space, too many files are open, etc. This behavior is identical to cp in FreeBSD 6.2 \
(likely earlier and later as well).

% coreutils-cp [-R | -a ] sub sub

Results in the message:
"cannot copy a directory `sub' into itself `sub/sub' "

The directory 'sub/sub' was created, but no 'sub/sub/sub/sub' ...

I think this behavior is more desirible. I'll be the first to agree that the \
coreutils logic is non-trivial (I've been walking both sets of code for a couple of \
days now). coreutils cp seems to prevent:

% cp dir dir
% cp dir dir/sub/dir
% cp dir (link->dir)

r8517 patch also seems to prevent the same things. In my testing, I haven't
encountered any problems yet; so I'm hoping someone could point out at
least one problem with the r8517 patch.



Thanks for your time.



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