At 10:08 PM -0700 4/19/01, Dima Dorfman wrote:
>Garance A Drosihn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Or maybe something to indicate where the list of arguments
>> should go in a command. Hrm. Let's say '-Y replstr' or
>> '-y[replstr]' (no blank after -y). If no [replstr] is
>> given on -y, it defaults to the two characters '[]'.
>> Then one might do:
>> cat big_file_list | xargs -y cp [] target_directory
>
>This is a great idea! I'm willing to implement it if nobody
>else wants to.
Woo-hoo! Someone to do the work! Yes!
> > you're trying to address. On the other hand, the man page
>> for 'xargs' on FreeBSD says:
>>
>> The xargs utility is expected to be IEEE Std 1003.2
>> (``POSIX.2'') compliant.
>>
>> so I don't know how we go about adding options to it. On
>> the other hand, that same issue is faced by adding options
>> to 'cp', as there is a similar claim made in cp's man page.
>
>I don't think it's a problem. We're adding new options here, not
>changing--sometimes known as breaking--what already exists. I'm
>pretty sure that the standards don't say anything to the effect of,
>"You must support this and nothing else." That'd be rather silly.
Actually, it's not as silly as it sounds. If you're writing
scripts, and you use those extra parameters, then you'll get
into trouble when running the script on some other POSIX-based
OS which does not have these new options.
I really do like the idea of both the -I/-i options from solaris,
and the -Y/-y options that I just dreamed up, but I'm not sure
what the right procedure is to introduce them (and eventually
have them standard everywhere... :-). Maybe we could initially
have a 'yargs' command, which is just like 'xargs' except that
it adds those four options. Maybe I'm just overly pedantic.
Hmm. Checking my copy of "Single Unix Specification, v2", the
-I/-i parameters are defined in THAT standard, but it doesn't
have anything matching my -Y/-y suggestion. Hmm, I wonder if
I should be copying this "meta-question" to the mailing list
for standardizing things...
--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Senior Systems Programmer or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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