On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 07:48:04PM +0200, kalle wrote: > hello. > with this mail I address e-mail-adresses related to the projects GNU > coreutils, util-linux and procps. > > it seems to me, that the programs who(1) [belonging to GNU coreutils], w > (1) [belonging to procps] and maybe also last(1) [belonging to > util-linux] are giving out similar output. > Wouldn't it make sense in the spirit of UNIX philosophy to have only one > specialized command with the different capabilities included ??
Don't forget that UNIX is no one-source stuff. It has long history with many parallel dialects, implementations and versions. Yes, now it's mostly about GNU & Linux and we (the few projects) have probably enough control to consolidate things, but backward compatibility is more important in this case. I guess w(1), last(1) and who(1) will be with us for ever. Perfect is the enemy of good ;-) Karel -- Karel Zak <k...@redhat.com> http://karelzak.blogspot.com