cat vs cp

voyciz · 12-22-2009, 09:10 AM

Hello. I noticed that in the build scripts for various software for Slackware packages (slackbuilds.org), rather than saying this:

Code:

cp TXTFILE NEWDIR/TXTFILE

it does this

Code:

cat TXTFILE > NEWDIR/TXTFILE

Why would this be? I did notice that using cat doesn't preserve the permissions, but is there anything else? Some sort of performance thing? Just curious. Thanks all.

ozanbaba · 12-22-2009, 12:16 PM

maybe cat could do better at it as it's simply read there, write here program.

probably just for not preserving permissions, and ownerships. (well actually cat does not copy, it reads from somewhere then writes it somewhere else).