instability in Berkeley versus AT&T releases (absurdly long)

[Henry Spencer]

> 	Why is "cat -v" a botch?  If you want to see if you have junk in a
> file it's a lot nicer than "od -c".  And what's so terrible about "ls -C"?

Nobody is arguing that the functionality isn't useful; it's just misplaced.
Funny-character expansion doesn't belong in cat any more than it belongs
in cp or tar; it should be a separate command.  Columnizing doesn't belong
in ls any more than it belongs in spell or grep; it should be a separate
command.  It is obviously useful to be able to invoke a columnizing ls
with one command, but that's a trivial shell file (or an alias, for those
who run shells that start up slowly and hence can't run small shell files
efficiently); there is no need to build it into ls.

For an explanation of why "one program, one function, done well" is a good
way to build a system, see almost any discussion of the "Unix philosophy".
Try Kernighan & Pike.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry