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Re: invoking gunzip.exe


From: Eli Zaretskii
Subject: Re: invoking gunzip.exe
Date: Sun, 29 Apr 2007 22:44:05 +0300

> Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2007 23:39:55 -0600
> From: Eric Blake <address@hidden>
> CC: Karl Berry <address@hidden>,  address@hidden, 
>  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> 
> $ gunzip --help |head -n2
> Usage: gzip [OPTION]... [FILE]...
> Compress or uncompress FILEs (by default, compress FILES in-place).
> 
> It is still possible to make a wrapper script give intelligent help
> (witness coreutils' groups, wrapping id), but it involves a lot more than
> a simple two-liner.  At which point, a simple #define difference in
> default options between two similar executables seems more maintainable.
> 
> Another benefit of making gunzip a full-blown executable rather than a
> shell wrapper is that the startup time is faster (and on cygwin and mingw,
> the extra process and time of a shell script wrapper is noticeable).
> Uncompressing is a common task, and should not be artificially slowed down
> because a shell script is in the mix when a binary could do the job.

Yes, these disadvantages are exactly those that make me wonder why we
are gradually replacing programs by shell scripts.




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