UUCP(1POSIX)

✨ PROLOG ✨

okay so real talk first, bestie 💖 this page is literally part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. That means the Linux version of this interface may be different (so like, go check the matching Linux manual page for the actual deets, mkay?), or honestly it might just not be implemented on Linux at all. no cap. 🙈

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🌸 NAME 🌸

uucp — system-to-system copy 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

uucp [-cCdfjmr] [-n user] source-file... destination-file

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so uucp copies files — the ones named by the source-file argument — over to the destination-file argument. and the files in question can live on local systems or remote systems. iconic, honestly. ✨

lowkey important: uucp cannot guarantee support for all character encodings in all circumstances. like, for example, transmission data may be restricted to 7 bits by the underlying network, and 8-bit data and filenames need not be portable to non-internationalized systems, and so on and so on. so under those circumstances, the recommendation is: only use characters defined in the ISO/IEC 646:1991 standard International Reference Version (equivalent to ASCII) 7-bit range of characters, and for naming files only use characters defined in the portable filename character set. also the protocol for transfer of files is unspecified by POSIX.1‐2008. fr fr.

typical implementations of this utility need 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 too. and on systems where there are no available communications means (whether temporarily or permanently), this utility shall write an error message describing the problem and exit with a non-zero exit status. 💀

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💖 OPTIONS 💖

uucp shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines. and these options shall be supported:

• -c — Do not copy local file to the spool directory for transfer to the remote machine (this is the default, bestie).
• -C — Force the copy of local files to the spool directory for transfer. ✨
• -d — Make all necessary directories for the file copy (also the 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.

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🌈 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. 🙈

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🍓 STDIN 🍓

Not used. (nope, nothing, not a single byte 💅)

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🧚 INPUT FILES 🧚

The files to be copied are regular files.

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💜 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.

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⭐ ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS ⭐

Default. (chill, nothing special happening here ✨)

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🫶 STDOUT 🫶

Not used.

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💀 STDERR 💀

The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

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🌸 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. 📬

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🎀 EXTENDED DESCRIPTION 🎀

None. (literally nothing, moving on bestie 💅)

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👑 EXIT STATUS 👑

The following exit values shall be returned:

• 0 — Successful completion. slay.
• >0 — An error occurred. 💀

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🌈 CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS 🌈

Default.

The following sections are informative. (aka, good to know but not rules, iykyk ✨)

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🦋 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. ⚠️

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🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

None.

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🧚 RATIONALE 🧚

None.

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💜 FUTURE DIRECTIONS 💜

None.

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⭐ 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

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💖 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 .

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate it up 💅✨ this was brought to you by IEEE/The Open Group, dated 2017 — UUCP(1POSIX) and that's on periodt 🎀🦋💖