Re: Debian / Redhat's md5sum options differ: which one is original
On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 09:12:17AM +0200, Johann Spies wrote:
> On debian you can do the following:
>
> md5sum -vc MD5SUMS
>
> but not on Redhat and Mandrake. I don't know about other
> distributions.
>
> Is the -v switch a Debian peculiarity? If it is, why would Debian
> create its own standard in this case making portability of programs
> much more difficult?
Hang on, you're complaining about Debian having an extra option? Most
people complain about portability problems when programs have *fewer*
options than other implementations. Just use 'md5sum -c' if it bothers
you; the output may be different but the exit code is the same, which is
all that scripts should care about.
Debian has a separate md5sum implementation for historical reasons: dpkg
needed its own and I don't think it was part of textutils at the time
dpkg was originally written. You can use md5sum.textutils if you want
the other implementation.
In any case, md5sum is not a standard program such as you'll find in
e.g. the Single Unix Specification, so if you're truly trying to be
portable you need to include your own implementation.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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