Unix already has "attributes"...

[John Gilmore]

Eagle!mjs (M.J.Shannon) said:
> Lose the data?  You mean you'd prefer a copy of a file not to have any of the
> attributes of the original?  That seems to me to forbid copying of executables
> (the non-homogeneous header gets lost in the shuffle, preventing execution of
> the copy).  Sorry, this *DOES* violate "the UNIX way of storing files".

Unix is not pristine about this either.  Why do you have to copy
executables with "cp" rather than "cat" or "dd"?  They won't execute if
you cat them...because the file permissions ("attributes" of the
original) are specifically propagated by code in "cp", but not by
"cat".

I have no doubt that adding MORE attributes would break existing Unix
utilities -- but I don't think that was the point of view expressed.