Re: having bash display real tabs for tab characters...

[Linda Walsh]

Eric Blake wrote:
> On 07/11/2013 04:06 PM, Linda Walsh wrote:
> > Revisiting this...
> >
> > Chet Ramey wrote:
> > > On 4/25/13 8:45 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > >
> > > > If you think Bash is misbehaving, submit a patch, or wait for Chet to
> > > > comment on one of these threads.
> > > I don't plan to comment or make any changes.  The demand for this
> > > feature seems vanishingly small.
>
> > Bash could be leading edge in this area by supporting a tab-set command
> > (so bash, as a side effect, would continue to know where the cursor is
> > on the line).
>
> This is YOUR itch, so YOU get to scratch it.  Apparently, no one else is
> interested in it enough to write the patches on your behalf, at least,
> not unless you are willing to hire someone to do that.  But at the same
> time, no one has vetoed the idea of incorporating well-written patches.
>  Patches speak louder than words; right now, your insistence on reviving
> dead threads and complaining that no one is writing the patches is
> rather annoying.  Quit beating a dead horse; if you want action, start
> proposing patches rather than rants.

That's great!  I'll put it on my todo list.  I wasn't complaining that no
one was writing the patches.  I was opining that the perceived demand
of for the feature was underrated, in part due to broken utils that
don't implement support for settable tabs.

At least you are not like the perl people who insist that the language
not change in order to support 20 year old scripts w/o modification (though
they never have explained why they would be able to put "use <newperlversion"
as a required minimum version to run, but not be able to update the script
to the new requirements.  Go figger.

As for the perl people, as soon as I asked if they were serious about
patches, they stopped throwing that excuse in my face and just started
saying no.

Samba did take a patch, but renamed it from the descriptive
"client managed wide links = <yes/[no]>"

to
"allow insecure wide links = <yes/[no]>",

which doesn't tell you what they do and gives inaccurate security advice
which they seem to have no problem doing (mostly because they got reamed
when someone didn't know the consequences and made a bit stink about
samba being insecure due to having the feature, so it was disabled for
a few versions.  Basically, for sites that allow users to login to
their file server, it's not a security issue.  For those who don't
then if enabled with 'unix extensions', wide links allowed someone
to create links like local users can -- pointing at anything, which,
permission allowing, would allow it access to anything a local user
could point a link at.  Ohmy!  Like I said, for those that already
have their local users with logins on the server, it's not
a security issue, making the new name bogus.

Also, I don't think the horse was dead or well vetted in the first place.
it was brushed aside as being of vanishingly small size.
I was merely pointing out that miniature ponies are more popular
than one might think...(stretching your idea a bit...)...