bcp

A convenient block copy program. bcp is intended to copy contiguous chunks of files from point A to point B. Want to cookie-cutter a piece out of of a file and plop it down in the middle of another file? Here you go.

Why?

Basically, the goal is to make a nicer version of the traditional Unix utility dd, because dd is just... weird. See the Jargon file entry for it, particularly lines like "the user interface for it is clearly a prank" and "it has no exact replacement". So, why not just make a replacement?

In particular: I want a Unix-y command line interface, I want to be able to blit large chunks of files from point A to point B, and I really don't need EBCDIC translation, byte swapping, "fail if the output file already exists" being classified as a conversion, a default block size of 512 bytes because that's how big hard drive blocks were on a PDP-11, or the ability to have it catch a SIGUSR1 and print I/O statistics. I want it to copy bytes, and that's all.