GNU ar vs SUS
Well, I found a concrete example ;-)
The manpage for ar says the following:
q Quick append; add files to the end of archive,
without checking for replacement.
The modifiers `a', `b', and `i' do not affect this
operation; new members are always placed at the end
of the archive.
The modifier `v' makes ar list each file as it is
appended.
Since the point of this operation is speed, the
archive's symbol table index is not updated, even
if it already existed; you can use `ar s' or ranlib
explicitly to update the symbol table index.
However, too many different systems assume quick
append rebuilds the index, so GNU ar implements `q'
as a synonym for `r'.
SUS agrees with everything except the last paragraph. SUS specificly says
that the index will not be updated and the a, b, and i options will not
work. The last paragraph implies quite strongly that this is not, in fact,
the case for the GNU implimentation. If q is implemented as a synonym for
r, then q == r, right? So there is no q option implementation that agrees
with SUS.
There is also an N option that doesn't appear within SUS, but I know how
to document that.
Is q==r just another "difference" to be listed along with N?
Waiting is,
Dwarf
P.S. For my money making q==r is broken behavior. (SUS or no SUS)
--
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