Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2001 09:24:17 -0400 From: Donn Miller <dmmiller@cvzoom.net> To: Juha Saarinen <juha@saarinen.org> Cc: stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: tail Message-ID: <3AED6781.8746018D@cvzoom.net> References: <KPECIILENDDLPCNIMLOFIEOJCCAA.juha@saarinen.org>
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Juha Saarinen wrote: > > :: UNIX is about doing what you ask for. You want to tail/cat a > :: directory, who is the system to tell you otherwise. > > That's just silly. > > Who hasn't mistakenly tailed/cat'ed a directory? > > I thought the "User-unfriendliness Is Cool" era was long buried. Like so many people before you already explained, doing tail on a directory IS useful in some rare situations, like for example, using tar, and certain other things. Remember, a directory is treated as a regular file on unix filesystems. I see no reason to correct tail's behavior. If you sit there and do `tail' on a directory all day long, then you've got problems. Surely, you might want to modifiy cat's behavior, because some poor unsuspecting user might get some ugly garbage printed to his terminal when he does 'cat' on a disk device. Really, doing tail on a directory is harmless (unless, of course, looking at the binary data being printed to the tty is causing seizures). If you think Linux does things better, then what the hey, just run Linux. Linux isn't a bad OS. Why must you run FreeBSD if you like Linux better? Both are great open source OS's, and both suit different types of users. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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