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Date:      Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:55:30 -0500
From:      jhell <jhell@DataIX.net>
To:        Garrett Cooper <yanefbsd@gmail.com>
Cc:        FreeBSD Hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>, Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za>
Subject:   Re: mktemp(1) in /tmp or $PWD?
Message-ID:  <alpine.BSF.2.00.1002262151540.94322@qvfongpu.qngnvk.ybpny>
In-Reply-To: <7d6fde3d1002260256g71b6e431i705cb8180fdd0a5d@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <7d6fde3d1002251850m3d32904emece0182e905b84c5@mail.gmail.com> <20100226092119.GA61498@owl.midgard.homeip.net> <7d6fde3d1002260203l5c7491c7w9ed84cdf40acf9d7@mail.gmail.com> <201002261229.10310.j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> <7d6fde3d1002260256g71b6e431i705cb8180fdd0a5d@mail.gmail.com>

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On Fri, 26 Feb 2010 05:56, yanefbsd@ wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 2:29 AM, Jonathan McKeown <j.mckeown@ru.ac.za> wrote:
>> On Friday 26 February 2010 12:03:42 Garrett Cooper wrote:
>>> FreeBSD is a great system; if there are ways that I can possibly make
>>> it better by adding smart defaults
>>
>> Be careful about that value judgement. There are certainly ways you can change
>> it. Not everyone might feel the change is for the better, and changing the
>> default behaviour of widely-used commands is one change that you might find
>> some people disagree with.
>
> I agree that there are some things that I'm going to have to apply on
> my own personal machines to achieve behavior that I want, and I agree
> that my way may not be the best way to do things, but that's part of
> the reasoning why I'm asking whether or not others find some value in
> what I'm proposing...
>
> Thanks,
> -Garrett
>

Hi Garrett,

First off don't get me wrong and I understand where your coming from on 
this but.  GNU/Linux utilities have assumed the lazy system administrators 
approach for a long time, let me explain.  By specifying defaults as said 
$PWD to find(1) you are now assuming that the user does not want to see 
any usage info and now has to type -h or maybe --help or possibly -? "This 
is Wrong".  Now on the case for mktemp(1) always specifying a /tmp as a 
default is making the lazy assumption that /tmp will always be usable yes 
this is BSD, Linux, UNIX but any utility that is going to write and not 
have a specified path should always write to $CWD and if $CWD is not 
writable then its a programming mistake.  I like knowing that when I issue 
a command whether it be from a script or from the prompt that I do not 
have to look elsewhere unless that is what I wanted.

Regards,

-- 

  jhell




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