Re: cp -p

[Bob Proulx]

> I feel that "cp -p" should not ignore the umask (although I see that
> this is the behaviour of Solaris's cp, too) because:

I disagree.  I believe the behavior is proper when specifying the -p
option.  Check out the online UNIX98 docs:

  http://www.unix-systems.org/single_unix_specification_v2/

>    Even if the user chmod's the file(s) afterwards, there is still a
>    window of possibly excessive permissions.
>    Users who wish to have the current behaviour can set their umask
>    before the cp, then reset it afterwards.

But the reverse is also true with the current implementation.  User's
that desire umask to be respected can avoid specifying the -p option.

But perhaps your request is really that you want a way to preserve
only timestamps on the file and no other attributes and the present
set of options does not provide a way to do that?  Something like
--preserve-timestamps or some such?

Bob