Coreutils head and tail problems

[Phil Edwards]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2003 at 06:04:02PM +0100, Joseph S. Myers wrote:
> 
> That simply means that replacement must be with more portable alternatives
> such as "sed q" (as used in Paul Eggert's patch
> <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2002-02/msg00516.html> to replace "head
> -1").
[...]
> But I agree that dropping support for these options, absent
> POSIXLY_CORRECT being set in the environment which GNU software would
> traditionally have used for such a purpose, is ridiculously premature.

You know, I'm usually the one arguing for adoption of new features.
But the POSIX thought police can have my "uniq", "head -1", and "diff -c"
when they pry it from my Cold. Dead. Hands.


> Though some cases might not have portable alteratives (include our
> own cut down implementation to be build for the build system?).

http://www.busybox.net/screenshot.html


-- 
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it.
    - Brian W. Kernighan