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Date:      Mon, 7 Jul 2014 13:56:32 -0600 (MDT)
From:      Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com>
To:        Arthur Chance <freebsd@qeng-ho.org>
Cc:        Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@rocketmail.com>, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: [Bulk] Re: The name "grep"
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.2.11.1407071352370.87353@wonkity.com>
In-Reply-To: <53BAD236.3060501@qeng-ho.org>
References:  <20140707075443.d47ca06a.freebsd@edvax.de> <53BA4F77.60907@qeng-ho.org> <20140707104403.5a0694ff.freebsd@edvax.de> <53BA71A7.9040208@qeng-ho.org> <1404728392.19389.1.camel@archlinux> <53BA9EC0.9000201@qeng-ho.org> <20140707160528.7ecf9855.freebsd@edvax.de> <1404750481.19389.12.camel@archlinux> <53BAD236.3060501@qeng-ho.org>

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On Mon, 7 Jul 2014, Arthur Chance wrote:

> On 07/07/2014 17:28, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 07 Jul 2014 14:21:04 +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
>>>> 	dd [options] [ infile [ outfile ]]
>> 
>> This way users by accident could mistake the infile with the outfile.
>> 
>> We dislike to randomly screw up infile and outfile, so IMO it makes
>> sense to force if= and of= "operands".
>
> There's no problem about which file is input and which output with cp or mv, 
> so why on earth would it be a problem with a sane version of dd?
>
> If you really need a hand holding indication of which file is which,
>
> 	dd -i $infile -o $outfile
>
> would be in the Unix spirit, unlike the existing form. And with an 
> interactive shell you could use filename completion which fails with the 
> existing dd.

There's an ongoing thread in the forums about csh completions.  dd is 
one of them:

complete dd 'c/if=/f/' 'c/of=/f/' \
             'c/conv=*,/(ascii block ebcdic lcase pareven noerror notrunc osync sparse swab sync unblock)/,' \
             'c/conv=/(ascii block ebcdic lcase pareven noerror notrunc osync sparse swab sync unblock)/,' \
             'p/*/(bs cbs count files fillcahr ibs if iseek obs of oseek seek skip conv)/='

There is no reason a wrapper script could not be written for dd.  It's 
probably about twenty years too late to popularize a different format, 
though.



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