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Date:      Sun, 3 Aug 1997 01:00:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:      j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
To:        freebsd-bugs
Subject:   Re: bin/4218: change in ping behavior: -c now counts _received_ packets
Message-ID:  <199708030800.BAA12082@hub.freebsd.org>

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The following reply was made to PR bin/4218; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
To: bkogawa@primenet.com
Cc: FreeBSD-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: bin/4218: change in ping behavior: -c now counts _received_ packets
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 09:49:48 +0200

 As bkogawa@primenet.com wrote:
 
 > /sbin/ping -c <count> now pings until <count> pings are _received_,
 > not until <count> pings are sent.
 
 I agree that this behaviour is not what one would usually expect from
 -c, but it seems to be this way in all ping -c versions i've seen so
 far.
 
 What makes you think this has been changed recently?  You can easily
 verify in CVS that it has been this way all the time for FreeBSD, at
 least.  So, while you're constantly speaking about `reverting'
 something, there isn't really something to revert.  Implementing it as
 a count of _sent_ packets would be a plain paradigm change, so it
 should probably be done with a different option.
 
 SysV versions of ping indeed limit the number of sent packets, but
 they don't do it with -c.  They use a positional argument instead (and
 often have a different default semantics anyway).  HP/UX uses -n
 count, but (according to the man page) as a semi-positional argument.
 -n is already in use in BSD ping (with the consistent meaning for all
 network utilities: prevent DNS lookups).
 
 -- 
 cheers, J"org
 
 joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
 Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)



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