Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 04 Jul 2000 14:37:53 +0200
From:      Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
To:        freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: truncate(1) implementation details (SUMMARY)
Message-ID:  <16614.962714273@axl.ops.uunet.co.za>

next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

I've worked on Alexander Langer's version of truncate(1) to get it to
the point where it's a useful utility.  I'll be submitting patches back
to him shortly.

Having had some time to reflect, however, I feel that this utility
should not be incorporated into the FreeBSD base system.

SUSv2 does not mandate this utility, in spite of the fact that the
standard mandates things like link(1), unlink(1) and pathchk(1).  I
feel that this is a good indicator that this utility is not needed often
enough to warrant its inclusion.

Certainly, it is useful at times.  However, I think that it is best left
as a port in the sysutils category, for those rare occasions when a
shell script's performance needs make the use of head(1)/rm(1) or dd(1)
infeasible.  Since shell scripts are not generally high-performance
tools, I believe that excluding the truncate(1) utility from the base
system would be of very little consequence.

Ciao,
Sheldon.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?16614.962714273>