I have patch version 2.12.  I go to the top level directory of some
pd program, say cap 6.0, and try to do a:
patch <cap60.patch030
It sees the lines:
*** etc/atis.c.orig    Wed May 29 22:44:18 1991
--- etc/atis.c         Sat Jul  6 02:27:24 1991
But still prompts me for the file to patch!
"etc" is a subdir of the current directory and contains the file atis.c.
What am I doing wrong?  It's tedious to type in the full path to the file,
especially when patch just scanned past it!
This doesn't happen when everything is thrown into one directory .. then it
finds all the files to patch automatically.

Any help much appreciated!

Rich

From patch(1):

     -p<number>
          sets the pathname strip count, which controls how path-
          names  found in the patch file are treated, in case the
          you keep your files in a different directory  than  the
          person  who sent out the patch.  The strip count speci-
          fies how many slashes are to be stripped from the front
          of the pathname.  (Any intervening directory names also
          go away.) For example, supposing the  filename  in  the
          patch file was

               /u/howard/src/blurfl/blurfl.c

          setting -p or -p0 gives the entire pathname unmodified,
          -p1 gives

               u/howard/src/blurfl/blurfl.c

          without the leading slash, -p4 gives

               blurfl/blurfl.c

          and not specifying -p at all just gives you "blurfl.c".
          Whatever  you  end  up with is looked for either in the
          current directory, or the directory specified by the -d
          switch.

--
Jonathan Kamens                                 j...@CATS.UCSC.EDU