directory copying with cp; broken?

[Greyham Stoney]

No doubt people have noticed this before, but to my way of thinking [and this
may well be the problem :-] cp on our BSD 4.2 system seems to be braindamaged.

When both the source and destination are directories, and the -r option is not
specified, the destination directory is left with a *file* by the name of the
source directory. Much the same as if
	cp sourcedir destdir
was really doing:
	cat sourcedir > destdir/sourcedir

I would have though cp intelligent enough to realise that source and dest were
directorys, and either do what the -r option does (so why do we need it?) or
just reject the copy. (depending on how you view these types of things)
Which ever solution, surely changing a directory into a regular file is a bit
inconsistent?.

		greyham at ausonics.oz
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