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Re: ls options: accept stdin, and list files except for...


From: Dan Heller
Subject: Re: ls options: accept stdin, and list files except for...
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 23:38:14 +0000

On Sep 16,  9:32pm, Richard Dawe wrote:
> I don't really understand how a dd command-line is going to get very long.

because of the number of files that can be on the command line... hence the
reason that dd accepts stdin.

> FWIW tar has an option to take filenames from a file.

yes, and it also has an option to take filenames from stdin, which was
my entire point: many unix commands already do this, and the ones that
don't are more the exception to the rule.

> I'm not sure what you can do about du (as it stands) and making it appear that
> multiple invocations appear as one. Perhaps you could wrap it in a shell
> script that munges the output, so it appears as one invocation.

that's the very thing we're trying to avoid.

> I don't know what resistance you are talking about. Your original bug report
> and the thing you are talking about now are completely different.

My original bug report is that certain commands don't accept filenames as
stdin. (the fix is that they should.)  The resistance I've been getting is
that these commands (ls and du, for example), do not need to do this because
xargs solves the problem. I'm arguing  xargs is not a sufficient solution.

> originally complained about long command-lines.

right, because commands can't read filenames as STDIN, you have no choice
but to use the filenames as args on the command line, but since that doesn't
work, the bug remains: commands need to read filenames from stdin.


If there is anythign still unclear, please let me know. To me, this seems
simple: modify these commands to read filenames from stdin, and ALL the
aforementioned problems go away.

-- 
--dan
http://www.danheller.com/




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