Coreutils head and tail problems

["Andrew Walrond" <andrew at walrond dot org>]

As I'm sure you know, head -1, tail -1 have been deprecated in favour of
head -n1 and tail -n1 in recent gnu coreutils, and indeed no longer works in
the latest releases.

But, a quick grep of 3.3.1 or mainline sources shows lots of instances of
the old usage:

rubyx@atlas gcc $ grep -r 'head -' *
boehm-gc/config.guess:  UNAME_RELEASE=`(head -1 /etc/motd | awk '{print
substr($5,1,3)}') 2>/dev/null`
boehm-gc/config.guess:  IBM_CPU_ID=`/usr/sbin/lsdev -C -c processor -S
available | head -1 | awk '{ print $1 }'`
config.guess:   # types through head -n 1, so we only detect the type of CPU
0.
config.guess:   ALPHA_CPU_TYPE=`/usr/sbin/psrinfo -v | sed -n -e 's/^  The
alpha \(.*\) processor.*$/\1/p' | head -n 1`
gcc/configure:  ld_ver=`$gcc_cv_ld --version 2>/dev/null | head -1`
gcc/configure:  as_ver=`$gcc_cv_as --version 2>/dev/null | head -1`
gcc/configure.in:  ld_ver=`$gcc_cv_ld --version 2>/dev/null | head -1`
gcc/configure.in:  as_ver=`$gcc_cv_as --version 2>/dev/null | head -1`
gcc/ada/a-textio.adb:   -- Look_Ahead --
gcc/ada/a-witeio.adb:   -- Look_Ahead --
gcc/ada/xeinfo.adb:   -- Sethead --
libjava/acinclude.m4:LD_VERSION_MAJOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 4`
libjava/acinclude.m4:LD_VERSION_MINOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 2`
libjava/aclocal.m4:LD_VERSION_MAJOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 4`
libjava/aclocal.m4:LD_VERSION_MINOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 2`
libjava/configure:LD_VERSION_MAJOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 4`
libjava/configure:LD_VERSION_MINOR=`echo "$LD_VERSION" | head -1 | cut -d
'.' -f 2`
libjava/java/lang/k_rem_pio2.c: *               r_tail = w - (r_head - t);
libstdc++-v3/acinclude.m4:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/aclocal.m4:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
libstdc++-v3/configure:  ldver=`$LD --version 2>/dev/null | head -1 | \
ltcf-c.sh:    archive_expsym_cmds='if test "x`head -1 $export_symbols`" =
xEXPORTS; then
ltcf-gcj.sh:    archive_expsym_cmds='if test "x`head -1 $export_symbols`" =
xEXPORTS; then
rubyx@atlas gcc $ grep -r 'tail -' *
contrib/test_summary:    system("tail -1 " srcdir "/LAST_UPDATED");
gcc/configure:     | tail -3 > conftest.got \
gcc/configure.in:     | tail -3 > conftest.got \
libstdc++-v3/scripts/check_survey.in:        TEXT)  TEXT=$(size -B $EXENAME
| tail -1 | awk '{print $1}')  ;;
libstdc++-v3/scripts/check_survey.in:        DATA)  DATA=$(size -B $EXENAME
| tail -1 | awk '{print $2}')  ;;
libstdc++-v3/scripts/check_survey.in:        SIZE)  SIZE=$(size -B $EXENAME
| tail -1 | awk '{print $4}')  ;;
rubyx@atlas gcc $


Is this a consequence of the version of autoconfig used? Can anything be
done about it?

Andrew Walrond