instability in Berkeley versus AT&T releases (absurdly long)
Henry Spencer
henry at utzoo.UUCP
Fri Aug 2 03:19:37 AEST 1985
> Why is "cat -v" a botch? If you want to see if you have junk in a
> file it's a lot nicer than "od -c". And what's so terrible about "ls -C"?
Nobody is arguing that the functionality isn't useful; it's just misplaced.
Funny-character expansion doesn't belong in cat any more than it belongs
in cp or tar; it should be a separate command. Columnizing doesn't belong
in ls any more than it belongs in spell or grep; it should be a separate
command. It is obviously useful to be able to invoke a columnizing ls
with one command, but that's a trivial shell file (or an alias, for those
who run shells that start up slowly and hence can't run small shell files
efficiently); there is no need to build it into ls.
For an explanation of why "one program, one function, done well" is a good
way to build a system, see almost any discussion of the "Unix philosophy".
Try Kernighan & Pike.
--
Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry
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