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To: Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
Cc: cvs-committers@FreeBSD.org, cvs-all@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/bin/mkdir mkdir.1 mkdir.c 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 30 Aug 1999 08:19:55 +0200."
             <199908300619.IAA27006@gratis.grondar.za> 
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Date: Sun, 29 Aug 1999 23:50:35 -0700
From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
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> You are missing a large point here. Closing PR's by adding features
> that users _think_ they want, ranther than by showing them canonical
> UNIX ways of doing things is _wrong_.

Conversely, holding to the "old way" when it's possible to make trivial 
concessions to people that need them is in no way a bad idea.

> If you want cp(1) to be "noisy", why not simply
> 
> $ echo cp * foo
> $ cp * foo
> 
> or
> 
> $ set -x
> $ cp * foo
> 
> ?

For the very obvious reason that this works pretty poorly for eg. cp -Rp

The general rule that I put to Mike was that programs that generate 
their own datasets (cp, rm, mv) are good candidates for this sort of 
feature, simply because there is no other way to access these datasets.
(No, I do not consider using 'find' to be acceptable, since these 
 options are for _interactive_ use.)

I'm less keen about mkdir and rmdir, but here the argument for 
orthogonality is strong.

Please folks; this is a ridiculous issue to be getting wrung out about. 
Go debug Jordan's 3000-space disklabel bug or something else useful for 
a change.

-- 
\\  The mind's the standard       \\  Mike Smith
\\  of the man.                   \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\    -- Joseph Merrick           \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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