NWE Help: Instruct: Teaching Help: Copy WWW

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Copy-www copies files from your students' public_html directories to your public_html directory so you can save student work at the end of a semester.

Note: copy-www will only copy work for students in classes for which you are the assigned instructor.

This venerable program has been rewritten to work a bit better and to copy fewer files. It now skips backups, sound files, and any software students have downloaded, so it won't cause unneeded disk space bloat. (List of the file extensions NOT copied by copy-www.)

To use the program, open a local xterm shell and type copy-www followed by the login names of the student(s) whose files you wish to copy.

For example, if you type

copy-www bbarker atrebek wmartind

copy-www will try to copy all the files in the public_html directories of 'bbarker', 'atrebek', and 'wmartind'.

The list of students to copy can be as short as one name or as long as you like. If you type off the end of the line, don't worry; it should wrap just fine.

Here's what copy-www does, in detail:

1. Announces itself cheerily.
2. Checks to see that the login names you have entered are genuine. Bogus names are skipped.
3. Checks to see if you already have a directory for saving student files (usually F98, S99, or something similar).
   • If you have the directory, copy-www stops and asks a question. It can simply write over all the student work you've already saved, or verify, one student at a time, that you want to update the saved files. Your choice.
   • If you don't have the directory, it makes one for you quietly.
4. Builds a list of all the files to copy, and make any subdirectories needed.
5. Tells you how many files are going to be copied...
6. copies like mad, and exits. Yay!

   If you have any problems with copy-www please email help@nwe.ufl.edu and we'll get right on it.