Eric Blake wrote: > According to Jim Meyering on 9/15/2009 5:49 AM: >> But couldn't, because stat didn't accept "-" as meaning standard input. >> Here's a patch to make it do that (and make the above print what's >> displayed): >> >> This is just FYI. >> Of course I'll add the usual NEWS, log and tests and post again later. > > Any progress on this? It sounded like a nice idea.
Thanks for the reminder. Here's why I've put it off: stat has two modes of operation: the default is to interpret each argument as a file on which to call stat or lstat. Then there's the --file-system (-f) option. The "-" == stdin approach makes sense for the first case. Since I couldn't think of a use case for the second, I was debating to implement it there regardless, for the sake of consistency. Otherwise, I'd have to document that it works only *without* -f. As I write this, however, I'm inclined to be consistent, even a plausible use case for -f. Besides, before I encountered the need for "stat -", I might not have been able to come up with a good use case either.