Unix already has "attributes"...

[J Q Johnson]

In article <452 at mtxinu.UUCP> ed at mtxinu.UUCP (Ed Gould) writes:
>>...Why do you have to copy
>>executables with "cp" rather than "cat" or "dd"?
>
>The reason is that cp is the utility to copy files. . . .

Precisely.  A special utility is needed because files are not the same
things as pipes or devices (yes, I'd like to be able to do things like
``exec("/dev/ttyh3")'' to upload a program from my micro!).  One way 
in which they differ is that they have some special attributes.  Not 
many, and the list of attributes is not user-extensible.