On Sun May 12 13:22:13 2024 Alexis wrote:
> Andreas Kähäri <andreas.kah...@abc.se> writes:
> > Well, that's one way to control this trainwreck of a script;
> > just say
> > that any name containing "inappropriate" characters aren't
> > allowed!
> >
> > May I ask why you don't simply use rsync(1) (or even
> > openrsync(1) from
> > the OpenBSD base system)?
>
> i'm not sure why you're addressing this to me, as i'm not the OP.
I guess it's me who Andreas should address this question to, right?
I gave a dirty example to someone who mentioned pax to the OP. Just
playing and lerning. :-)
I've been using rsync since ever, but, first, I don't think rsync is
bulletproof either and, second, making a backup with pax is faster and
in some cases simpler. If you don't want to delete files on the target
you don't need to do scripting at all.
Let's take the example I put in my first message. With rsync, you'll
have to do something like this:
~/backup_list
----------------------------
# backup_list
.Xdefaults
.kshrc
.nexrc
.profile
.calendar/
.config/feh/
.config/fontconfig/
.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css
Documents/
Pictures/
[...]
-------------------------------
files=$(egrep -v "^$|^#" ~/backup_list)
for i in $files ; do
rsync -av --delete --mkpath $HOME/$i $device/$user/$i
done
But openrsync doesn't have a '--mkpath' option, I let Andreas to think
the solution. :-)
>
> That said, yes, minimising the extent to which certain non-'word'
> characters (i.e. roughly the POSIX 'alnum' class as described in
> re_format(7)) _can_ make it easier to programatically do certain
> tasks which are restricted by the long and messy history of C and
> Unix development. Given that i've been using computers for a few
> decades, i still instinctively don't use spaces in filenames, even
> though they're very much allowed. But of course, that's not what
> most of the world does, and this is an example of trying to work
> out what the best tradeoffs might be when dealing with the
> messiness of the real world.
I overlooked this in my example because I *never* use spaces, UTF-8 or
any special characters to name my file names. Lately, I finally
persuaded my wife to use Linux, after decades of having to use Windows.
Even when I educated her in this matter she has clients who send her
files named with any kind of crap, so taking care of this issue is still
convenient.
>
>
> Alexis.
>
>
>
--
Walter
