Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 16:30:10 -0700 From: Fred Gilham <gilham@csl.sri.com> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adding a '-D date' option to `cat' Message-ID: <99788.1157499010@snapdragon.csl.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <44FDFEBF.90708@uts.edu.au> References: <200608281545.k7SFjn6l063922@lurza.secnetix.de> <p06230928c11e2298ca97@[128.113.24.47]> <200609020956.54008.Lucas.James@ldjcs.com.au> <20060902031247.GE749@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <20060904192006.GA3292@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org> <p06230937c122c6983e00@[128.113.24.47]> <44FD994C.70104@errno.com> <44FDEE7C.9060104@FreeBSD.org> <44FDF245.9000302@elischer.org> <44FDF36A.3010608@FreeBSD.org> <44FDFEBF.90708@uts.edu.au>
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I think there's a good reason for not adding features to the base tools and that is that it breaks compatibility. More than once I've ran afoul of "bashisms" where people take for granted that everyone's sh is bash, and the result is painful debugging or strange incomprehensible bug reports that say in essence, "It doesn't work on my system and I don't know why." Once you add functionality to a well known command, people will use it and write incompatible scripts with it. This isn't good. It may sound like I'm a dullard. Maybe so, but I think many people are in my shoes, and for us this kind of fiddling with the system utilities is user-hostile. It's much easier to see that a script doesn't work because you don't have the "stamp" command than to wonder what the "-zztop" flag to cat is supposed to do. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com Nerds aren't losers. They're just playing a different game, and a game much closer to the one played in the real world. -- Paul Graham
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