Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 09:40:11 -0700 (PDT) From: Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au> To: freebsd-bugs@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: bin/54784: find -ls wastes space Message-ID: <200307231640.h6NGeB6k031825@freefall.freebsd.org>
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The following reply was made to PR bin/54784; it has been noted by GNATS.
From: Andy Farkas <andyf@speednet.com.au>
To: Peter Pentchev <roam@ringlet.net>
Cc: bug-followup@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: bin/54784: find -ls wastes space
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2003 02:34:01 +1000 (EST)
On Wed, 23 Jul 2003, Peter Pentchev wrote:
> In the past, people have objected strongly to changing the output of
> ps(1) for exactly this reason. IMHO, there are several reasons not
> to rely on whitespace in parsing the output of ls(1) or find(1);
> for a trivial, though somewhat rare, example, consider whitespace in
> the localized representation of date and time.
If there are objections, I'd like to hear the reasons. I think if you are
relying on a fixed-width formatted string returned from a utility, then
you are relying on the wrong thing.
> Other than that, there might be the human problem of comparing the
> output of 'find' run on different machines with different usernames,
Different machines may have different values of UT_NAMESIZE. A human
comapring two lists would be able to compensate.
> or even on the same machine, different directories owned by different
> users; the columns, and sometimes line continuations, would be all out
> of whack.
No. The computed value of namelength is same for all users on the same
machine.
--
:{ andyf@speednet.com.au
Andy Farkas
System Administrator
Speednet Communications
http://www.speednet.com.au/
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