From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Sep 6 06:59:59 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6911716A4DA for ; Wed, 6 Sep 2006 06:59:59 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from der_uf@gmx.de) Received: from mail.gmx.net (mail.gmx.net [213.165.64.20]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6BCE443D45 for ; Wed, 6 Sep 2006 06:59:58 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from der_uf@gmx.de) Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 06 Sep 2006 06:59:57 -0000 Received: from a81-14-154-127.net-htp.de (EHLO fbsd.Amnesiac.unsernet) [81.14.154.127] by mail.gmx.net (mp042) with SMTP; 06 Sep 2006 08:59:57 +0200 X-Authenticated: #31554707 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=localhost.unsernet) by fbsd.Amnesiac.unsernet with esmtp (Exim 4.63 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1GKtBT-000ORu-6f for freebsd-current@freebsd.org; Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:54:59 +0000 Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 08:54:58 -0000 To: FreeBSD-current From: "Ullrich Franke" Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; delsp=yes; charset=utf-8 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: User-Agent: Opera Mail/9.01 (FreeBSD) X-Y-GMX-Trusted: 0 Subject: Re: Adding a '-D date' option to `cat' X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 06 Sep 2006 06:59:59 -0000 > Fred Gilham wrote: > > 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. Put a note in the manpage, that use in scripts is deprecated. If its implementation is simple and its functionality needed by users, perhaps others will pick up the feature. I think this can be called progress. If people still write incompatible scripts with it, they won't come here to complain. They'll go and complain where the feature is missing. And this is not necessarily a bad thing. -- Ullrich Franke