a bug relating to carry-tapes and a question relating copy file

["Robert W. Kerns" <RWK@scrc-yukon.arpa>]

    Date: Thu, 1 Oct 87 11:35 EDT
    From: Jeffrey Mark Siskind <Qobi@ZERMATT.LCS.MIT.EDU>

	    2) How can I copy a whole tree of directories from a LMFS to a
	    UNIX 4.2 with one command. That is what is the equivalent to
	    the ** convention for the UNIX pathname parser? I know that
	    UNIX itself has no convention but at least the lispm pathname
	    parser should handle it and allow me to do a copy multiple files
	    and diorectories with something like
	    :copy file bd:>Siskind>**>*.*.* marxc:/user/siskind/**/*.*.*
	    Also it would be nice to have a way to optionally preserve
	    version number when going to UNIX. Many sites do not have a LMFS
	    machine directly on an external net or only have tape drives
	    on a UNIX machine so transfering files often has to go through
	    some UNIX intermediary. I would like to be able to preserve
	    my verison numbers in such a case.

	Here I have a problem. I don't see why we should implement
	functionalitly that the designers of UNIX didn't implement. But I will
	forwardd your suggestion along. After all I'm just one voice. 

    I don't agree, at least with respect to the ** convention. The issue is not
    whether UNIX implements this feature. It is a capability of the lispm general
    pathname and file capability. All that is needed is to determine some desirable
    syntax and augment the UNIX pathname parser on the lispm to generate :wild-inferiors
    when appropriate. The rest should happen autoamtically.

No, it won't.  It will blow out as soon as you send that
fake-unix syntax over the network to ask it to list its
directory.  Depending on just what kind of connection you
have to the Unix, it might or might not be possible to
simulate it by asking the Unix a whole lot of separate
questions.  It seems silly for us to simulate features
that Unix doesn't have, and only succeeed part of the time,
when you can just avoid the problem by not using Unix!

    In general a really bad problem with carry tapes is that I cant write one from
    one directory and load it up on another directory without redirecting practically
    every file by hand. I want to be able to dump all of my files from MIT,
    where my directory is z:>Qobi> and bring them up at Xerox PARC, where my
    directory is bd:>Siskind>. There is no easy way to do this with either carry tapes,
    distribution tapes, 
It's relatively easy with distribution tapes.  You do it every time you
load one of our distributions, since the directory names you put it
under are different than the ones we wrote it from.  You just have
to use logical pathnames.  Distribution tapes are usually the best
and recommended solution to this kind of situation

			or the backup dumper. And I would like to preserve version
    numbers in the process. It would be nice if I could go through a UNIX machine if
    needed, as the cart tape mechanism is very unreliable, at least for carry tape
    format.  
As others have pointed out, you can directly write to a Unix tape drive
from a LispM.
	     THIS IS A SORELY LACKING FEATURE OF THE SYMBOLICS ENVIRONMENT!