Subject: File Duplication, ooops!

From: Clint Danbury <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 8 Sep 1996 11:52:44 -0700

Boy did I ever screw up.  Advice on the solution to this is welcome,
requested, and appreciated. 

Here's my problem.

I save various messages from various usenet newsgroups.

I use maybe 12-to-24 different files with different names to keep things
orderly.

Normal sequence for saving a message is like this

1	"S"  for save
2	"^T" takes me to the files
3	     cursor keys take me to the specific file I want
4	<Enter> key chooses that file.
5	<Enter> puts the message in that file.

Then sometimes I get fancy (or so I thought) and skip steps 2/3/4 by just
remembering the name of the desired file and putting that name in place
using my keyboard.

This, of course, puts the same-named (but logically separate) file in my
home directory instead of the ..../mail/... directory.

And the result ?  Duplicate file names on non-duplicate files located on
logically different  areas on my machine; i.e. el-confuse-o max-o

Is there a simple way to ....

	(A)	Take all of the contents of the file
		in my home directory 

	(B)	Put said contents into the file in the 
		..../mail/... sub-directory which has 
		the same name

	(C)	Delete the file in my home directory 
		which has the improperly chosen 
		duplicate name.

		...?

Thanks for any advice which is simple to understand and which also works
in real life.

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---

From: [email-masked] (Ramanuj Basu)
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 1996 00:00:52 GMT

Assuming you're in Unix at the shell prompt in your login directory, the command

  cat bob >> mail/bob

will add the contents of file bob in your login directory to file bob in your
mail directory.  The command

  rm bob

will then delete file bob from your home directory.

If you want to *replace* file bob in the mail directory with file bob from the
login directory (instead of adding them together), use a single ">" instead of
the double one above.
-- 
 Ramanuj Basu, Audience Services Coordinator & PC Systems Manager
 Caltech Public Events, Mail Code 332-92, Pasadena, CA 91125
 phone: 818-395-3667 - fax: 818-795-1378 - http://www.caltech.edu/~tickets/