On 2007-09-25 22:49, Pollywog <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tuesday 25 September 2007 22:21:48 Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > > A word of caution there... > > > > If you plan to use GNU/Linux manpages for learning sed(1) be _very_ > > cautious for GNU/Linux-specific parts. There are subtle, yet > > possibly important differences between GNU/Linux sed and BSD sed. > > I am generally aware that sometimes there are differences between the > utilities used with Linux and their BSD counterparts. As for the > differences themselves, do they exist because someone has "reinvented" > the utilities or is there perhaps another reason?
The history and evolution of the BSD command-line tools and their GNU counterparts is not exactly 'linear'. Some of the BSD features were implemented first in BSD sources, and then where reimplemented from scratch in the GNU toolchain. Others were implemented first in the GNU tools and were ported to BSD. Sometimes, when porting a certain feature from GNU tools to the BSD world there were 'conflicts', i.e. an option letter was already taken, or the way GNU tools did something didn't fit the existing "BSD way of life" so it was retrofitted to the traditional BSD standards, to avoid POLA violations for example. It's not easy to answer precisely what the reasons for all the possible differences are, but we can at least try if you have a particular difference in mind :-) - Giorgos _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"