regarding head/tail syntax

[Aron Griffis]

Hello,

I'm a developer for the Gentoo Linux distribution.  Right now we've been
doing some work on packages to make them work with head/tail from
coreutils-5.0, which as you know no longer support the -number syntax.
This led me to do some investigation and eventually write this email.

First, I checked out some of the current UNIX flavors out there.  I
checked Tru64 UNIX 5.1B, Digital UNIX 4.0G, HP-UX B.11.11, Solaris 9,
AIX 4.3, and NetBSD 1.6.  In all of them, -number is allowed.  I
seriously doubt that any of the commercial UNIXes will ever disallow the
-number syntax because it would break too many customer scripts.

Second, I checked the Single UNIX Specification, Version 2, which still
allows the head -number syntax.  It recommends that applications should
use the -n number option, since the obsolescent -number form may be
withdrawn in a future issue.  However it does not make a recommendation
to implementors to remove the -number syntax.

Additionally, I noted that the Single UNIX Specification does not make
application recommendations for tail, although it refers to the older
syntax as obsolescent.

The pain I'm seeing in the Gentoo Linux distribution, along with the
above research, leads me to question the rationale behind removing the
-number syntax in the GNU coreutils.  Personally, I don't see a
motivation for their removal, since the older syntax is unambiguous and
in heavy use by thousands of UNIX scripts already in existence.  It
doesn't seem fruitful for the Gentoo developers (along with developers
of other distributions) to spend our time making this trivial change in
hundreds of packages, and trying to push the changes upstream.

Would the coreutils maintainers consider reinstating the older syntax to
save us the unnecessary toil?  If that is not considered an option,
would you mind explaining the rationale behind making this change to the
head/tail programs?  I checked the coreutils FAQ but didn't find
coverage of this topic.

Thanks for the work you put into these programs.  We appreciate it.

Regards,
Aron