shell pipeline to reverse the order of lines.
John F Haugh II
jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
Sat Mar 2 06:44:56 AEST 1991
In article <2775 at kraftbus.cs.tu-berlin.de> net at opal.cs.tu-berlin.de (Oliver Laumann) writes:
>A vendor is free to put a version of `ls' on their UNIX port that
>doesn't support the -l option any longer. Does this make `ls -l'
>non-standard? Certainly not.
Name one that has done so. This is a straw man argument. No vendor
would ever remove the 'ls' command simply because removing it would
remove a significant part of what UNIX is. However, the issue of
which options are ``standard'' in the 'tail' command is far more
clear - those options which the most common subset of implementations
contain.
As I pointed out from the Release 5.0 UNIX System User's Manual, the
`-r' option was not a ``common'' feature in System V UNIX. This manual
predates 4.3BSD many several years. System V UNIX is the most common
UNIX running on i286 and i386 systems, which are themselves the most
common PC platforms running UNIX. And in the one-up category, I know
that 'tail' was present in the USG 3.0 and 4.0 releases for the PDP-11
since I used it when tailing logs from kernel builds.
>The fact that it may not exist on *all* systems is irrelevant. I'm sure
>that for almost any UNIX command (except maybe date, ls, etc.) you will
>be able to find a system where this command does not exist.
No, but the fact that it does not exist on =most= systems is relevant.
The tail command exists on every single UNIX system I've ever used, and
that numbers over a dozen. But the '-r' option exists where? [ Yeah, I'm
a System V bigot, so don't point out that it exists in BSD land ... ]
>> As for being a ``BSD'' feature, I've yet to see a UNIX system without
>> the command,
>
>Why do you think `tail' is under /usr/ucb (on those systems that have
>a /usr/ucb)? If the commands under /usr/ucb are not BSD commands,
>then what *is* a BSD command?
How about ... it's there because it contains BSD-only features? Is it
possible that -r is a BSD-only feature and they put the command there
because of that?
If tail is a BSD-only command why isn't the source part of the freed
BSD source code? It isn't. I'm certain someone with a V7 manual
(mine has left my possession years ago) will verify my statement that
it was a part of 7th Edition or System III at the least. I do seem
to recall seeing tail used in examples given in documents written about
the time of V7 (which predates all the 4BSD releases ...)
I was going to get my German/English dictionary out and try to explain
it to you in German, but your English seems good enough. What part of
"-r isn't a standard feature" don't you understand exactly?
--
John F. Haugh II | Distribution to | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832 | GEnie PROHIBITED :-) | Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
"I've never written a device driver, but I have written a device driver manual"
-- Robert Hartman, IDE Corp.
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