Re: Order of files with 'cp'

Brian Candler wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 11:33:54AM -0800, Tim Kientzle wrote:
>>Brian Candler wrote:
>>
>>>I've noticed on FreeBSD-5.4 and -6.0 that the order in which 'cp' copies
>>>multiple files does not match the order they're given on the command line.
>>
>>My suggestion:  Have 'cp' call fts_open once for each
>>command-line argument, ....
> 
> Erm, but that just undoes the reason for calling fts_open with mastercmp in
> the first place, which is to get it to pick files before directories (or
> vice versa, as its behaviour seems to be) as an 'optimisation'.

Why is that an optimization?

I thought the whole point of this thread was that users
expect utilities to process the command-line arguments
in the order they're given.

Tim