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PROLOG
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The Linux implementation of
this interface may differ (consult the corresponding Linux manual page for details of
Linux behavior), or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
NAME
uucp — system-to-system copy
SYNOPSIS
uucp [-cCdfjmr] [-n user] source-file... destination-file
DESCRIPTION
The uucp utility shall copy files named by the source-file argument to the destination-
file argument. The files named can be on local or remote systems.
The uucp utility cannot guarantee support for all character encodings in all
circumstances. For example, transmission data may be restricted to 7 bits by the
underlying network, 8-bit data and filenames need not be portable to non-internationalized
systems, and so on. Under these circumstances, it is recommended that only characters
defined in the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard International Reference Version (equivalent to
ASCII) 7-bit range of characters be used, and that only characters defined in the portable
filename character set be used for naming files. The protocol for transfer of files is
unspecified by POSIX.1‐2008.
Typical implementations of this utility require a communications line configured to use
the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 11, General Terminal Interface, but
other communications means may be used. On systems where there are no available
communications means (either temporarily or permanently), this utility shall write an
error message describing the problem and exit with a non-zero exit status.
OPTIONS
The uucp utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section
12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-c Do not copy local file to the spool directory for transfer to the remote machine
(default).
-C Force the copy of local files to the spool directory for transfer.
-d Make all necessary directories for the file copy (default).
-f Do not make intermediate directories for the file copy.
-j Write the job identification string to standard output. This job identification
can be used by uustat to obtain the status or terminate a job.
-m Send mail to the requester when the copy is completed.
-n user Notify user on the remote system that a file was sent.
-r Do not start the file transfer; just queue the job.
OPERANDS
The following operands shall be supported:
destination-file, source-file
A pathname of a file to be copied to, or from, respectively. Either name can be
a pathname on the local machine, or can have the form:
system-name!pathname
where system-name is taken from a list of system names that uucp knows about.
The destination system-name can also be a list of names such as:
system-name!system-name!...!system-name!pathname
in which case, an attempt is made to send the file via the specified route to
the destination. Care should be taken to ensure that intermediate nodes in the
route are willing to forward information.
The shell pattern matching notation characters '?', '*', and "[...]" appearing
in pathname shall be expanded on the appropriate system.
Pathnames can be one of:
1. An absolute pathname.
2. A pathname preceded by ~user where user is a login name on the specified
system and is replaced by that user's login directory. Note that if an
invalid login is specified, the default is to the public directory (called
PUBDIR; the actual location of PUBDIR is implementation-defined).
3. A pathname preceded by ~/destination where destination is appended to
PUBDIR.
Note: This destination is treated as a filename unless more than one
file is being transferred by this request or the destination is
already a directory. To ensure that it is a directory, follow the
destination with a '/'. For example, ~/dan/ as the destination
makes the directory PUBDIR/dan if it does not exist and puts the
requested files in that directory.
4. Anything else shall be prefixed by the current directory.
If the result is an erroneous pathname for the remote system, the copy shall
fail. If the destination-file is a directory, the last part of the source-file
name shall be used.
The read, write, and execute permissions given by uucp are implementation-
defined.
STDIN
Not used.
INPUT FILES
The files to be copied are regular files.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of uucp:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or
null. (See the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
Internationalization Variables for the precedence of internationalization
variables used to determine the values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other
internationalization variables.
LC_COLLATE
Determine the locale for the behavior of ranges, equivalence classes, and multi-
character collating elements within bracketed filename patterns.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data
as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in
arguments and input files) and the behavior of character classes within
bracketed filename patterns (for example, "'[[:lower:]]*'").
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of
diagnostic messages written to standard error, and informative messages written
to standard output.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES.
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
Not used.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
OUTPUT FILES
The output files (which may be on other systems) are copies of the input files.
If -m is used, mail files are modified.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
Default.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
This utility is part of the UUCP Utilities option and need not be supported by all
implementations.
The domain of remotely accessible files can (and for obvious security reasons usually
should) be severely restricted.
Note that the '!' character in addresses has to be escaped when using csh as a command
interpreter because of its history substitution syntax. For ksh and sh the escape is not
necessary, but may be used.
As noted above, shell metacharacters appearing in pathnames are expanded on the
appropriate system. On an internationalized system, this is done under the control of
local settings of LC_COLLATE and LC_CTYPE. Thus, care should be taken when using
bracketed filename patterns, as collation and typing rules may vary from one system to
another. Also be aware that certain types of expression (that is, equivalence classes,
character classes, and collating symbols) need not be supported on non-internationalized
systems.
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
mailx, uuencode, uustat, uux
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8, Environment Variables, Chapter 11,
General Terminal Interface, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std
1003.1-2017, Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface
(POSIX), The Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright (C) 2018 by
the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. In the
event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group
Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The
original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page are most likely to have
been introduced during the conversion of the source files to man page format. To report
such errors, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .