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Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:04:47 +0200 (CEST)
From: Harti Brandt <brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de>
To: Stephen McKay <smckay@internode.on.net>
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Subject: Re: posix ps (was Re: Adding `pgrep' and `pkill' to /usr/bin) 
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On Mon, 29 Mar 2004, Stephen McKay wrote:

SM>On Monday, 29th March 2004, Harti Brandt wrote:
SM>
SM>>Think of 'ls -o'. -o is taken by posix to mean the same as '-l' but
SM>>without showing the group. FreeBSD ls instead takes it to show file flags.
SM>>This is a more obvious case where you want the selection.
SM>
SM>I had promised to leave this debate, having said what I thought needed to
SM>be said.  But this (and your subsequent message) implies that there are
SM>people who want to add $PERSONALITY to many basic FreeBSD utilities, not
SM>just in ps.
SM>
SM>This is a very bad road to take.  Far from solving portability difficulties,
SM>it guarantees those difficulties into the indefinite future.
SM>
SM>If we need posix compatibility (and this should be a separate debate), then
SM>we take the pain and change the 'ls -o' option.  For one release cycle the
SM>option still works in the old manner but outputs a warning.  In the next
SM>major release, it changes to the posix flavour.  Bang.  Problem solved.
SM>Adding a hidden variable just makes things more complicated and guarantees
SM>the pain continues forever.  People *will* set this variable inappropriately,
SM>and it *will* be a source of problems.

I'm all with you on this. I said all this under the proposition that we
want to keep BSD syntax that conflicts with Posix. Sure, I'd rather simply
move to posix. (The only thing I'd want to retain is 'ps ax' :-)

SM>PS Should the CC list be truncated now?

Ok. After this one :-)

harti