small bug in who(1) of SVR3
Guy Harris
guy at auspex.auspex.com
Tue Jan 15 06:31:18 AEST 1991
>There seems to be a pervasive delusion that the only two ways things can
>be done are (a) add every conceivable option to the C program or (b) force
>the user to type long sequences using pipes. The correct approach, when
>such functionality is often used, is to package it up in a system-supplied
>shell file.
I suspect a lot of the reason why people think only in terms of those
options is that the "system-supplied shell file" is often *not* supplied
by the system. This isn't an argument against the *principle* of not
shoveling options into every command; however, it *is* an argument
against one of the mindset of the vendors of the systems (hardware or
software vendors, and probably any organization that puts out a version
of UNIX is guilty of this - including your favorite one, for most values
of "you").
I don't know if the problem can be fixed by better education, or if the
notion of packaging such functionality into a shell file isn't likely to
be picked up by most vendors, for whatever reason - which might well be
an argument against the idea in *practice*.
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