Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 11:30:33 +0200 (CEST) From: Oliver Fromme <olli@lurza.secnetix.de> To: freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG, bv@wjv.com, drosih@rpi.edu Subject: Re: Adding a 'D - Date' option to 'cat' Message-ID: <200609070930.k879UXDq012983@lurza.secnetix.de> In-Reply-To: <p0623094ac12557db4b8f@[128.113.24.47]>
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Garance A Drosihn wrote: > Bill Vermillion wrote: > > > > That's pretty much the basic Unix philosophy - a lot of small > > programs that can be chained together to do almost anything you can > > imagine, instead of putting all the POSSIBLE needed options into > > each program that MAY or MAY NOT need it. > > Well, the proposed option to `cat' is already dead, but just > as an aside: > > Notice what happens when some issue like this comes up. The > unix philosophy is supposedly to champion lots of small utility > programs. An issue like Julian's comes up, where no *small*, > well-designed utility can get the job done. What does everyone > suggest? Why, "Just load up a turing-complete multi-megabyte > executable like Perl [which FreeBSD won't even include in the > base OS because it's too much of a hassle], and then write/debug > your own perl script which can handle your job!". Gnu-awk is about 150 KB in size (which isn't huge, IMHO), and adding timestamps with it is a trivial one-liner. Admittedly it is not in the FreeBSD base system anymore (unfortunately), but adding it from ports or packages is only a matter of a few seconds. I'm using it all the time. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "It combines all the worst aspects of C and Lisp: a billion different sublanguages in one monolithic executable. It combines the power of C with the readability of PostScript." -- Jamie Zawinski, when asked: "What's wrong with perl?"
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