Re: Could we use gunzip -c instead of zcat?
Yves Arrouye writes:
Yves> Hello, I'd like to suggest that scripts, debian.rules etc... use
Yves> gunzip -c instead of zcat when the intent is to get the contents of a
Yves> gzipped file on stdout.
No way.
Yves> This is because if binaries from a BSD compress package (not
Yves> necessarily built with compress-package) will make a true zcat
Yves> available on the system, which of course cannot handle gzipped files.
That's why we should not do this. Gzip's zcat supersedes and replaces
compress' zcat as it deals with both compression formats. compress' zcat can
only uncompressed compressed files, but not gzipped ones. Why should we
cripple our system?
Come on, Yves, it's a historic fact: compress is dead. As proprietary
standards should be. No reason a GNU/Linux system should try to change this.
We have (gzip's) zcat and gunzip to deal with it's dead bodies. And maybe
your compress installer to create a few more skeletons though I still don't
know why we need this.
--
Dirk Eddelb"uttel http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/~edd
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