ok, i finally narrowed down what my issue with patch was. let's say that i have the absolute name of a patch file, $PATCH, and the absolute name of a directory, $DIR, in which that patch should be applied (with -p1, it turns out). what will work nicely is: $ patch -d $DIR -p1 < $PATCH what will *not* work is: $ patch -d $DIR -force -p1 < $PATCH now, before you all point out the obvious typo (it should be either "-f" or "--force", not "-force"), what happens is that *no* warning is given, and patch appears to run normally, assuring me that, yes, files are all being patched properly, when in fact, nothing of the sort is happening. argh. rday
