On Tue, 2004-08-24 at 13:57, Paul Eggert wrote: > Albert Cahalan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > It's no more legal or illegal than "head -42 foo". > > "head -42 foo" is explicitly disallowed by the guidelines. > "head --lines 42 foo" is not. But we're veering from the main point. > > > I'm bothering. > > Thanks. (It's a thankless job, normally. :-) > > > So, will you accept the opinion of the committee chair? > > There's no rush. Let's wait until the standard is formally changed or > corrected, as I imagine it will be.
There is a rush. Linux distributions should be shipping with the very latest standard enabled. If "foo -x" has changed meaning, the new meaning is desired. Minutes of the August 26 teleconference include: ---------------- begin quote --------------- XBD ERN 16 Utilities that have extensions violating the Utility Syntax Guidelines Accept as marked. It was agreed that an interpretation be made , that the standard is clear and no change is required. The standard permits implementations to have extensions that violate the Utility Syntax Guidelines so long as when the utility is used in line with the forms defined by the standard that it follows the Utility Syntax Guidelines. Thus head --42 file and ls --help are permitted as extensions. ---------------- end quote ----------------- (note that this implies that "ls --help" does violate the Utility Syntax Guidelines, but that it's OK to do so) There's no point in waiting for the interpretation to be written up I think, since it just formally states what I've been saying all along. The standard does not need to be changed. BTW, compile-time options are generally trouble. Most of the time, one choice is clearly superior. Every Linux distribution will want SE Linux support, will want the very latest UNIX standard, will want LSB compliance, and so on. Testing is easier if everybody is running the same thing. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils