Re: Why is prename deprecated?
On 2018-07-11, Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> wrote:
>
> What I DO NOT WANT is for the name 'prename' to go away. Because then
> all the programs that call prename will fail.
>
> What I DO NOT WANT is for someone in Debian to tell me that I should be
> calling 'rename' instead, because this is dangerous. There is a different
> program named 'rename' on Red Hat systems, and it has incompatible syntax
> and behavior. Calling 'prename' in a shell script is safe, because if
> you run it on a Red Hat system, you get a nice friendly error message
> telling you that prename isn't found, instead of some random behavior.
>
> Calling 'rename' in a shell script is a recipe for disaster. You can't
> know what will happen.
>
> I figured I'd better speak up now, before we have another mailx -> s-nail
> disaster at buster's release. Names of things are important. You can't
> just go changing them on a whim.
>
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=870472
(I guess this addresses your concern.)
Reply to: