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Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2011 07:56:04 +0000
From: Ruslan Ermilov <ru@FreeBSD.org>
To: Jilles Tjoelker <jilles@stack.nl>
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Cc: svn-src-head@FreeBSD.org, svn-src-all@FreeBSD.org,
	src-committers@FreeBSD.org
Subject: Re: svn commit: r223372 - head/bin/realpath
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On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 10:28:03PM +0200, Jilles Tjoelker wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 07:34:57PM +0000, Ruslan Ermilov wrote:
> > Author: ru
> > Date: Tue Jun 21 19:34:57 2011
> > New Revision: 223372
> > URL: http://svn.freebsd.org/changeset/base/223372
> 
> > Log:
> >   Make ``realpath'' behave like ``realpath .''.
> 
> Is this being added for compatibility with something?
> 
> If not, why do we need this non-standard extension if the shorter and
> standard pwd -P already fulfills this function?

I treat it as a convenient addition to a non-standard utility.

realpath(1) was first added in FreeBSD in year 2000 by phk@,
as a convenience utility.  In r90523 the ability to call
"realpath" without arguments (with a similar behavior but
different implementation) was added by mike@.  Ten months
later, this syntax was removed by johan@ in r108034.

I'm not aware of any standard and/or another non-FreeBSD based
OS that also have this utility (only saw a mention of a patch
that adds an utility of the same name into GNU shell-utils,
but it seems to have never happened).  We could emphasize this:

Index: realpath.1
===================================================================
--- realpath.1	(revision 223372)
+++ realpath.1	(working copy)
@@ -69,6 +69,10 @@
 fails.
 .Sh EXIT STATUS
 .Ex -std
+.Sh COMPATIBILITY
+The
+.Nm
+utility is non-standard and should not be used in portable scripts.
 .Sh SEE ALSO
 .Xr realpath 3
 .Sh HISTORY


Cheers,
-- 
Ruslan Ermilov
ru@FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD committer