On Dec 10, 2007, at 5:06 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
What's the difference between "xinstall" and "file copy" and "copy"? Here's what I've found:
- xinstall has the -W option so you can say "xinstall -W src a b c d dst" to copy a whole bunch of named files from src to dst. It doesn't look like file copy can do that. - file copy can copy directories. It doesn't look like xinstall can do that. - file copy preserves modification dates. xinstall does not. - copy is the same as file copy.
What's the difference between "xinstall -d" and "file mkdir"? I don't know. And if there's a reason to use "file mkdir", should there be an alias "mkdir" for it?
This is a good comparative analysis, thanks. The file command in Tcl obviously predates xinstall, the latter being written when I noticed that a lot of people were doing "system install ..." and the option of building it in meant that I could provide better error reporting and a few other features (like -W) down the road. I didn't really compare and contrast it thoroughly with the file procedure, though I probably should have just to establish the areas of overlap. I do know that xinstall is certainly a lot more powerful than file copy when it comes to specifying target ownership, modes and so on. For that reason alone, it might be a good idea to simply add the notion of preserving modification dates and such (I'm not sure what you mean by "copying directories" above). - Jordan