From owner-freebsd-current Fri Apr 20 4:15:15 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from ipcard.iptcom.net (ipcard.iptcom.net [212.9.224.5]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AFDF37B423 for ; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 04:15:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sobomax@FreeBSD.org) Received: from vic.sabbo.net (dialup7-47.iptelecom.net.ua [212.9.227.175]) by ipcard.iptcom.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA58282; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:14:57 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from sobomax@FreeBSD.org) Received: from FreeBSD.org (big_brother.vega.com [192.168.1.1]) by vic.sabbo.net (8.11.3/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f3KBDk202794; Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:13:46 +0300 (EEST) (envelope-from sobomax@FreeBSD.org) Message-ID: <3AE019B7.6C76556A@FreeBSD.org> Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 14:12:55 +0300 From: Maxim Sobolev Organization: Vega International Capital X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (WinNT; U) X-Accept-Language: uk,ru,en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dima Dorfman Cc: Garance A Drosihn , "John W. De Boskey" , Current List Subject: Re: cp -d dir patch for review (or 'xargs'?) References: <20010420050842.E8EA93E2F@bazooka.unixfreak.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=koi8-r Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Dima Dorfman wrote: > Garance A Drosihn 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