UUCP(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual UUCP(1P)
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.1-2008, 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.1-2008, 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 appro-
priate 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 speci-
fied, the default is to the public directory (called PUB-
DIR; 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 exam-
ple, ~/dan/ as the destination makes the direc-
tory 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 vari-
ables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions vol-
ume of POSIX.1-2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari-
ables 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 brack-
eted 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 sup-
ported 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 syn-
tax. 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.1-2008, Chapter 8, Environment
Variables, Chapter 11, General Terminal Interface, Section 12.2, Util-
ity Syntax Guidelines
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form
from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
-- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri-
cal and Electronics Engineers, Inc and The Open Group. (This is
POSIX.1-2008 with the 2013 Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) 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.unix.org/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.ker-
nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2013 UUCP(1P)