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Date:      Sun, 29 Apr 2001 22:22:05 -0700
From:      Ted Faber <faber@lunabase.org>
To:        Juha Saarinen <juha@saarinen.org>
Cc:        Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>, Chris Byrnes <chris@jeah.net>, stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: tail
Message-ID:  <20010429222205.A29058@praxis.lunabase.org>
In-Reply-To: <KPECIILENDDLPCNIMLOFOEOICCAA.juha@saarinen.org>; from juha@saarinen.org on Mon, Apr 30, 2001 at 05:08:47PM %2B1200
References:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104301632200.43352-100000@lists.unixathome.org> <KPECIILENDDLPCNIMLOFOEOICCAA.juha@saarinen.org>

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On Mon, Apr 30, 2001 at 05:08:47PM +1200, Juha Saarinen wrote:
> Well, it's silly to do that unthinkingly. Here's what happens on a Debian
> box:
> 
> juha@cyrus:~$ tail /
> tail: /: Is a directory
> 
> More desirable behaviour, IMO.

FYI, and maybe surprisingly, you're about to start a flame war.  BSD
tail and related tools have been treating directories as files for
*many* years.  The behavior goes back to the earliest UNIX systems.
It will not change, nor is it worth arguing about.

If you hate the behavior, put a 2-line shell script around tail, cat,
and whatever other programs you want that aborts the operation if the
argument's a directory.


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