From owner-freebsd-arch  Tue Jul  4  5:38:14 2000
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From: Sheldon Hearn <sheldonh@uunet.co.za>
To: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: truncate(1) implementation details (SUMMARY)
Date: Tue, 04 Jul 2000 14:37:53 +0200
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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.


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