Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:12:55 +0300 From: Maxim Sobolev <sobomax@FreeBSD.org> To: Dima Dorfman <dima@unixfreak.org> Cc: Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu>, "John W. De Boskey" <jwd@bsdwins.com>, Current List <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: cp -d dir patch for review (or 'xargs'?) Message-ID: <3AE019B7.6C76556A@FreeBSD.org> References: <20010420050842.E8EA93E2F@bazooka.unixfreak.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Dima Dorfman wrote: > Garance A Drosihn <drosih@rpi.edu> writes: > > Or maybe something to indicate where the list of arguments > > should go in a command. Hrm. Let's say '-Y replstr' or > > '-y[replstr]' (no blank after -y). If no [replstr] is > > given on -y, it defaults to the two characters '[]'. > > Then one might do: > > cat big_file_list | xargs -y cp [] target_directory > > This is a great idea! I'm willing to implement it if nobody else > wants to. > > > you're trying to address. On the other hand, the man page > > for 'xargs' on FreeBSD says: > > > > The xargs utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2 > > (``POSIX.2'') compliant. > > > > so I don't know how we go about adding options to it. On > > the other hand, that same issue is faced by adding options > > to 'cp', as there is a similar claim made in cp's man page. > > I don't think it's a problem. We're adding new options here, not > changing--sometimes known as breaking--what already exists. I'm > pretty sure that the standards don't say anything to the effect of, > "You must support this and nothing else." That'd be rather silly. I don't think that introducing a new option in the tool that expected to be compatible among several systems is a good thing. Once new option is introduced and documented, people would start using it, in many cases even without a notion that this option is FreeBSD specific, which will obviously lead to users' confusion and scripts incompatabilities. The right way to go, IMO, is to introduce a simple wrapper for xargs (say yargs), that it will be clearly documented as a FreeBSD scecific thing. -Maxim To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3AE019B7.6C76556A>