From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Sep 5 23:30:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D8C016A4DF for ; Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:30:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from gilham@csl.sri.com) Received: from mailgate-internal2.sri.com (mailgate-internal2.SRI.COM [128.18.84.104]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id D1B8543D4C for ; Tue, 5 Sep 2006 23:30:11 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gilham@csl.sri.com) Received: from localhost (HELO mailgate-internal2.SRI.COM) (127.0.0.1) by mailgate-internal2.sri.com with SMTP; 5 Sep 2006 23:30:10 -0000 Received: from mx1.csl.sri.com ([130.107.1.29]) by mailgate-internal2.SRI.COM (SMSSMTP 4.1.11.41) with SMTP id M2006090516301019857 for ; Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:30:10 -0700 Received: from snapdragon.csl.sri.com (snapdragon.csl.sri.com [130.107.19.20]) by mx1.csl.sri.com (8.13.6/8.12.11) with ESMTP id k85NUA19019286 for ; Tue, 5 Sep 2006 16:30:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gilham@snapdragon.csl.sri.com) To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org In-reply-to: <44FDFEBF.90708@uts.edu.au> References: <200608281545.k7SFjn6l063922@lurza.secnetix.de> <200609020956.54008.Lucas.James@ldjcs.com.au> <20060902031247.GE749@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <20060904192006.GA3292@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <44FD994C.70104@errno.com> <44FDEE7C.9060104@FreeBSD.org> <44FDF245.9000302@elischer.org> <44FDF36A.3010608@FreeBSD.org> <44FDFEBF.90708@uts.edu.au> Comments: In-reply-to Tony Maher message dated "Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:48:31 +1000." X-Mailer: MH-E 8.0.1; nmh 1.2; GNU Emacs 22.0.50 Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:30:10 -0700 Message-ID: <99788.1157499010@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> From: Fred Gilham Subject: Re: Adding a '-D date' option to `cat' X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 23:30:15 -0000 I think there's a good reason for not adding features to the base tools and that is that it breaks compatibility. More than once I've ran afoul of "bashisms" where people take for granted that everyone's sh is bash, and the result is painful debugging or strange incomprehensible bug reports that say in essence, "It doesn't work on my system and I don't know why." Once you add functionality to a well known command, people will use it and write incompatible scripts with it. This isn't good. It may sound like I'm a dullard. Maybe so, but I think many people are in my shoes, and for us this kind of fiddling with the system utilities is user-hostile. It's much easier to see that a script doesn't work because you don't have the "stamp" command than to wonder what the "-zztop" flag to cat is supposed to do. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. -- Paul Graham