Re: list of portable tools

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Paul Eggert wrote on Thu, Apr 05, 2007 at 06:19:16PM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> >   fold, split, join, cut, paste
> 
> 'split' and 'join' are traditional and portable.  'fold', 'cut', and
> 'paste' are relative newcomers, as they were not part of Unix Version 7
> and (if I recall correctly) were not in earlier BSD versions.

So I gather that `fold', `cut', and `paste' stand no chance of ending up
listed in make-stds.texi?

> > The distinction in make-stds.texi doesn't make a lot of
> > sense to me, really.
> 
> I think it is a list that evolved over a long period of time, with
> applications being installed on a lot of machines.

Oh, I sense a misunderstanding here: what I don't grasp in
make-stds.texi is the fact that there are two lists of tools: one in
address@hidden Utilities in Makefiles' and one in address@hidden Install Command
Categories'.  Should libtool now need to restrict itself to the
intersection of both lists, as it is invoked both at build and install
time (and moreover sometimes invokes a link command at install time)?

> > split, cut, and paste are not easily replaceable by awk, due to the
> > line length limitations of the latter (input must be text file).
> 
> True.  I try to avoid non-text-files in my applications, but the line
> length limits can be a pain sometimes.

The major reason libtool needs these tools is to cope with long command
lines (with many arguments) efficiently, i.e., without scaling
quadratically in the number of arguments or bytes in the command line.

> > I haven't tried for join yet
> 
> 'join' input must be text files, according to POSIX.

Yes.  I meant to write `I haven't tried to replace "join" with an awk
script yet', but I think that would be doable, because both eat text
files.  Sorry.

> > So, how portable are these tools?
> 
> Most systems have them all these days, I assume.  But like I said, I
> don't want to be the first to find the bugs in 'fold', 'cut', and
> 'paste'.

So I gather awk, split, and join stand a chance of ending up listed in
make-stds.texi, and which of the two lists?

Thanks,
Ralf