Re: less: extra entries for lesspipe
David Welton wrote:
> zless, so, why not build on that and just use a different name. Or is
> there something that I am missing because of my late entry into the
> discussion (sorry)?
Background: when 'less' runs, it looks for an environment var called
"LESSOPEN" If it finds one, it uses the value to spawn a process from
which less will display the standard output. The usual usage of this is
to automatically unzip .gz files, so you don't have to do so by hand.
Another common use is to run tar -t on tar files so that you see the list
of files inside, insead of contral characters
The general question is, how much do we want this lessopen program to do?
The specific queston is, what should it do with binaries?
The old solution was to run strings on the binaries, which was less
than acceptable. Several people rightly complained about that.
The new question is, which is better: a lot of info about the binary file,
or the contents?
I have been convinced that there is some utility in looking at the raw
files; I also see some utility in information about the files.
However, since the lessopen program is only a shell script, I think the
best solution may be to leave binaries alone and allow users to add
entries for them if the users so wish.
Carl
--
--mummert@cs.wcu.edu-----------
The sun's not eternal
That's why there's the blues...
-- Ginsburg
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: