Another possible kernel enhancement...

[John F Haugh II]

In article <1183 at amix.commodore.com> ag at amix.commodore.com (Keith Gabryelski) writes:
>In article <19069 at rpp386.cactus.org> jfh at rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II)
>>The solution is to permit the "\" character to function as a line
>>continuation character on input, and add "\" characters on output.
>
>A more general solution is to fix the bug that prevents the program
>from correctly dealing with sufficiently long lines.

Agreed.  However, this has a dependency on fixing every program which
might ever have anything to do with text files.  It isn't just that
getgrent() can't handle arbitrary length lines - but neither can a
whole slew of other commands that don't rely on getgrent() for their
input.

>Ps, This is not to say that line continuation characters are evil but
>they should be unnecessary.

Regrettably they are quite necessary because so many other UNIX commands
don't properly handle lines of arbitrary length.  ;-(
-- 
John F. Haugh II                             UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!rpp386!jfh
Ma Bell: (512) 832-8832                           Domain: jfh at rpp386.cactus.org
"I've never written a device driver, but I have written a device driver manual"
                -- Robert Hartman, IDE Corp.