How to move directories around, really?

[Vicki Brown]

In article <48934 at seismo.CSS.GOV> black at beno.CSS.GOV (Mike Black) writes:
>OK guys, what am I missing?  I always copy directories useing 'cp -r' which
>works fine, copies the files and not the links and has never burped on me
>for any reason.  What's the problem with doing it this way?
                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Depends what you want.  tar, cpio, and others of that ilk allow you to
preserve the last-mod time, owner, group, permissions, etc.  cp does not.
When I want an exact (well, as exact as possible ;-) copy of a file tree,
I use cpio.  We happen to have both (cpio & tar) as well as pax (!); for
file tree copying, I rate cpio very highly.  For normal archives, I'd rather
use tar.  I have not used pax, as yet.

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