On Sunday 01 October 2017 11:56:01 to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Sun, Oct 01, 2017 at 11:36:40AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote: > > > --binary-files=TYPE > > [...] > > > And that, while lots more typing, seems to duplicate the -I option. > > It does; actually, --binary-files=foo gives you some more control, > depending on <foo>, whereas -I abbreviates one commonly used case, > namely the "without-match" case. > > This pattern (long vs. short options; sometimes long options offer > more knobs) is pervasive in the GNU utilities world, and has a > historical reason. > > In the good ol' times, there were a few proprietary Unixes (AT&T, > Sun's Xenix, what not), and they all came with their own set of > utilities, with mixed quality and slightly incompatible options. > > The GNU toolset was installable on most unices and tried, as far as > possible, to be downward-compatible to all of them (plus often being > of higher quality: less bugs, less limitations. For one anecdote, the > system's awk had a line length limit of 1K and silently (!) truncated > longer lines; GNU awk just digested any line length you threw at it). > > Long story short, any sysadmin worth their salt ended up installing > the GNU utils. > > This explains a bit that thicket of options you see nowadays, often > with long and short variants (the systematized double dash for long, > and single dash for short options is already GNU's attempt at taming > the chaos: you'll see many vestigial variants, like the single-dash > longs of find(1) et al). > > Then Linux came and most of the user space was there, waiting... > (the success of the free BSDs and Linux wouldn't have been the same > otherwise). > > > > My English module masters this (and it is pretty old too. > > > Moreover, it was a cheap second-hand one, labelled "for > > > foreigners" ;-) > > > > Chuckle... It is working very well, too. And I thank you for taking > > the trouble to learn a language you didn't often hear growing up. > > Had I stayed in school, the language class choices then were Latin > > and French. But TBT, I didn't stick around, I had an allergy problem > > which turned out to be milk when it was finally found, and my > > algebra teacher was more interested in off-color standup comedy than > > in teaching algebra, so in 1948 there was a job market for tv > > repairmen, so I quit and went to work. Fixing these new-fangled > > things they called tv sets. I was 14. So I was a geek before the > > word was invented. :) But now I'm an just old geezer that can regale > > you with stories about some of the BTDT's I've done. :) And I've > > learned something useful today, thanks to you and Reco. > > Hey, thank you for taking my snark in such a sporty way :-) > > Cheers > -- tomás
Snark, usually w/o the smileys, is also one of my talents. But you can't see me grinning, so... :) Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
