moving files with mv

On Thu, 2003-08-14 at 19:54, Kurt Granroth wrote:
> On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 03:56 PM, Thomas Cameron wrote:
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Craig White" <craigwhite@azapple.com>
> >> If I use the command such as:
> >>
> >> mv DGN ../files-no-backup/ -R -p
> >>
> >> is it at all possible that these files may be lost because of a
> >> character within the file name that is legal on Windows isn't legal on
> >> Linux and thus, isn't copied? Is that just a Macintosh gotcha?
> >
> > It can happen for either OS - I've seen 'Doze users name a file
> > something
> > like:
> >
> > My silly long file name (January report).doc
> > Contact info for Joseph "Joe" Smith.doc
> >
> > In either case the parentheses or quotes can really screw with Linux.
> > My
> > advice - use tar, not mv or cp:
> >
> > cd /path/to/source
> > tar c * | taxf - -C /path/to/destination
> >
> > This seems to handle it better, and keeps ownership straight.
>
> Hrm.. while 'tar' is certainly a valid choice, I think it's overkill
> for this case. Using 'tar' to recursively COPY entire directories
> instead of using 'cp' makes sense since it does a better job of
> preserving everything. However, 'mv' shouldn't ever have a problem
> with any legal files.
>
> And yes, those files with parentheses and quotes are just fine under
> Linux. Any decent shell will take care of escaping everything that
> needs escaping.
>
----
I'm gathering that you are saying that my problem last time was with the
'cp' command and it shouldn't have (or wouldn't have) happened if I had
'mv' the files instead - is that it?

This time, I am on the same filesystem so I would expect a whole lot
less trouble whereas the time I lost some files, I was moving the files
from one hard drive to another.

Tar does seem safer...

Craig