Re: Commands and Utilities Proposal, 0.2
hi
A couple of minor notes on the v.02.
On Nov 23, 10:03am in "Commands and Utiliti", Jakob 'sparky' Kaivo wrote:
> echo
> SYNOPSIS
> echo [-n] [-e] [string ...]
> OPTIONS
> -n Do not print a newline after string.
> -e Enable escape characters.
> NOTES
> Default support for escape characters is implementation
> dependant. In order to be sure that escape characters are
> enabled, use the -e option. Use of command line options is not
> portable outside of LSB.
It probably also portable to BSD derived shells and echo utilities
>
> Rationale:
> UNIX98 specifies no options for echo. Linux has traditionally
> supported both -n and -e, and it is expected that they are
> supported. Also, the -n option is useful. UNIX98 recommends using
> printf for maximum portability, as the System V and BSD versions of
> echo differed in their interpretations of options. If portability is a
> major concern, printf is recommended.
>
> ln
> SYNOPSIS
> ln [-f] [-s] source_file target_file
> ln [-f] [-s] source_file... target_dir
> OPTIONS
> -f Force existing destination pathnames to be removed to
> allow the link.
> -s Create a symbolic (or soft) link rather than a hard link.
> NOTES
> Use of the -s option is not portable outside of LSB.
>
> Rationale:
> UNIX98 doesn't specify the -s option. The Linux kernel has supported
> symbolic links since (what, forever?). Symlinks are widely used on
> Linux-based systems, and should be supported on all such sytems.
Symlinks are required for UNIX 98 systems at the syscall level, its just
the utilities were waiting on POSIX to get done:-) The good news
is that they will be included in the next Austin Group specs (the
revision to POSIX and the Single UNIX Spec) due
in late February and that should match the ln -s described above
and so that will be fully portable at some point.
regards
Andrew
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