Re: Afew words about POSIX and mkisofs
scdbackup@gmx.net wrote:
> To Joerg :
>
> I cannot see any practical benefit from changing the meaning of option -L.
The benefit is to convert all utilities to have at least a few options
work the same way in case the utilities do the same thing. This is true for
-H/-L/-P. I know that this may create pain for some time but it helps in the
future.
> As the author of cdrtools you are entitled to do such a change.
> It is not a friendly gesture towards your programming users, nevertheless.
As mkisofs will warn users of the outdated options for a long time before
the POSIX semantic is adopted, I see no real problem.
> To POSIX :
>
> Guys, you got a gigantomania problem.
> Didn't you learn anything from the flop with command "tail" ?
>
> The old style like "tail -1" has been obsoleted by POSIX a decade ago.
> There are versions around which threaten to enforce the change to "tail -n 1".
> They only print error messages but do not dare to refuse work. (Small minds.)
> Obsoletion is in POSIX 1003.2-1992, denial of legality in POSIX 1003.1-2001.
If you find tail implentations that refuse tail -9, they are really a result
of unfriendly programmers.
The big difference between mkisofs and tail is that there are many
implementations of "tail" but only one mkisofs. It is impossible to grant that
_all_ tail implementations will print warnings when using the outdated command
line syntax. Mkisofs however does print warnings and for this reason it is
possible to make a transition.
To you: POSIX.1-2001 does _not_ forbid tail -9 to work. There recently has been
a hot discussion on the POSIX standard mailing list. There is absolutely _no_
definition in current POSIX versions that contradicts the old tail -9 syntax.
All UNIX tail implementations I know still allow it.
Jörg
--
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
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