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Date: Fri, 01 Sep 2006 13:08:10 -0700
From: Julian Elischer <julian@elischer.org>
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To: Garance A Drosehn <gad@freebsd.org>
References: <200608281545.k7SFjn6l063922@lurza.secnetix.de>
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Cc: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=F8rgrav?= <des@des.no>,
	freebsd-current@freebsd.org, Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de>
Subject: Re: suggested addition to 'date'
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Garance A Drosehn wrote:

> At 5:45 PM +0200 8/28/06, Oliver Fromme wrote:
>
>> John Baldwin wrote:
>>  > Oliver Fromme wrote:
>>  > > There's another possibility, which doesn't require a new
>>  > > option letter at all.  You could add a new escape sequence
>>  > > to the format string, e.g. "%*".  Whenever date(1) is
>>  > > called with a format string containing that sequence, it
>>  > > goes into filter mode and replaces the sequence with the
>>  > > current line.
>
>
> Note that the main objection to this option (at least from my
> point of view) is that date should not be going into filter
> mode.  Not ever.  Date is a command to set or display dates.
> It is not a command to filter files.  'cat' would be a more
> appropriate place to add this option.


well that's your opinion and it's as arbitrary as mine is..

I think Date's job is to output dates (and set them).
To me it makes sense to include the categories of output called 
"Appending" and "Prepending".