Date: Tue, 1 May 2001 05:28:40 -0600 (MDT) From: Doug Russell <drussell@saturn-tech.com> To: Juha Saarinen <juha@saarinen.org> Cc: Donn Miller <dmmiller@cvzoom.net>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: tail Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0105010522450.78446-100000@beastie.saturn-tech.com> In-Reply-To: <KPECIILENDDLPCNIMLOFEEPDCCAA.juha@saarinen.org>
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On Tue, 1 May 2001, Juha Saarinen wrote: > Note the "rare situations" -- it's not useful when you make a typo, or a > mistake. > > :: Remember, a directory is treated as a > :: regular file on unix filesystems. > > Not sure about this; if you e.g. vi a directory, it will warn you that it > isn't a "regular file". Only because vi specifically recognises that case. > :: I see no reason to correct tail's > :: behavior. If you sit there and do `tail' on a directory all day long, > :: then you've got problems. Surely, you might want to modifiy cat's > :: behavior, because some poor unsuspecting user might get some ugly > :: garbage printed to his terminal when he does 'cat' on a disk device. > > So the best thing to do is to keep the current behaviour for tail et al, but > make it accessible through a flag. Most of the time, that behaviour isn't > desirable, hence it should only be invoked if you really need it. No, the behavior should stay the same by default, with a flag that can be used to turn on "sanity checking". You would have to change FAR, FAR too many things to make the whole system dafault to "typo proof" behavior. Like I said in my previous message, having some sort of add-on that you could use to MAKE the system more user-friendly, etc would be a very worthwhile (although rather large) project, and 'A Good Thing'. Changing the default behavior of the entire system to be more like Windows is NOT. Later...... <Doug> To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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