56 messages in org.freebsd.freebsd-stableRe: tail| From | Sent On | Attachments |
|---|---|---|
| Chris Byrnes | Apr 29, 2001 9:24 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 9:29 pm | |
| David W.Chapman Jr. | Apr 29, 2001 9:31 pm | |
| Christopher Schulte | Apr 29, 2001 9:32 pm | |
| Mike Tancsa | Apr 29, 2001 9:33 pm | |
| Dan Langille | Apr 29, 2001 9:34 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 10:04 pm | |
| Chris Byrnes | Apr 29, 2001 10:07 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 10:08 pm | |
| Kris Kennaway | Apr 29, 2001 10:12 pm | |
| David W.Chapman Jr. | Apr 29, 2001 10:15 pm | |
| Mike Meyer | Apr 29, 2001 10:15 pm | |
| Ted Faber | Apr 29, 2001 10:21 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 10:55 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 10:55 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 10:58 pm | |
| David W. Chapman Jr. | Apr 29, 2001 11:04 pm | |
| Steve O'Hara-Smith | Apr 29, 2001 11:20 pm | |
| Mike Meyer | Apr 29, 2001 11:30 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 11:53 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 29, 2001 11:53 pm | |
| Mike Meyer | Apr 29, 2001 11:58 pm | |
| Jordan Hubbard | Apr 30, 2001 12:00 am | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 30, 2001 12:11 am | |
| Jordan Hubbard | Apr 30, 2001 12:18 am | |
| Mike Meyer | Apr 30, 2001 12:23 am | |
| Andre Goeree | Apr 30, 2001 12:33 am | |
| Valentin Nechayev | Apr 30, 2001 1:03 am | |
| Valentin Nechayev | Apr 30, 2001 1:18 am | |
| Raymond Wiker | Apr 30, 2001 1:54 am | |
| David Malone | Apr 30, 2001 2:13 am | |
| Kal Torak | Apr 30, 2001 2:24 am | |
| Panagiotis Astithas | Apr 30, 2001 2:33 am | |
| Oliver Fromme | Apr 30, 2001 5:03 am | |
| Donn Miller | Apr 30, 2001 6:23 am | |
| Rodney W. Grimes | Apr 30, 2001 8:43 am | |
| Ted Faber | Apr 30, 2001 9:00 am | |
| Chris Byrnes | Apr 30, 2001 9:08 am | |
| Arthur W. Neilson III | Apr 30, 2001 11:41 am | |
| Donn Miller | Apr 30, 2001 11:53 am | |
| Sue Blake | Apr 30, 2001 12:35 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 30, 2001 12:43 pm | |
| Lyndon Nerenberg | Apr 30, 2001 12:48 pm | |
| Lyndon Nerenberg | Apr 30, 2001 12:53 pm | |
| Dan Langille | Apr 30, 2001 1:01 pm | |
| Fred Gilham | Apr 30, 2001 1:39 pm | |
| Juha Saarinen | Apr 30, 2001 2:02 pm | |
| Chad R. Larson | Apr 30, 2001 6:27 pm | |
| Steve O'Hara-Smith | Apr 30, 2001 10:29 pm | |
| Jano Lukac | Apr 30, 2001 10:37 pm | |
| Jordan Hubbard | May 1, 2001 12:16 am | |
| Doug Russell | May 1, 2001 2:22 am | |
| Doug Russell | May 1, 2001 4:28 am | |
| Matthew Hunt | May 1, 2001 9:36 am | |
| Christian Chen | May 2, 2001 12:33 am | |
| Oliver Fromme | May 2, 2001 2:55 am |
| Subject: | Re: tail | |
|---|---|---|
| From: | Valentin Nechayev (net...@iv.nn.kiev.ua) | |
| Date: | Apr 30, 2001 1:03:30 am | |
| List: | org.freebsd.freebsd-stable | |
Sun, Apr 29, 2001 at 22:22:05, faber (Ted Faber) wrote about "Re: tail":
juha@cyrus:~$ tail / tail: /: Is a directory
More desirable behaviour, IMO.
FYI, and maybe surprisingly, you're about to start a flame war. BSD tail and related tools have been treating directories as files for *many* years.
Can you please prove nesessarity of such behavior, as really useful examples of cat/tail of directory, or an example of needed compatibility? If no (and I am sure that you has no such examples), you should consider badness of writing arbitrary binary data to terminal. E.g., xterm & screen terminals can be dropped to unrepairable state in such way.
(And, in some file systems, directory can be not flat file with special access methods, but tree, hash or another. Flat reading of such directory is impossible and nonsense.)
The behavior goes back to the earliest UNIX systems.
In the earliest UNIX systems, there were no network, VM, and even chdir was an external command which modifies parent's current directory. Do you really want to keep such legacy now? Your idea for unrestricted directory reading is from the same series.
It will not change, nor is it worth arguing about.
Well, do use Bell Unix V6 instead of FreeBSD. As for now, no normal utility reads directory directly; they use getdirentries() or getdents(). There are reasons to restrict reading of flat directory dump to special API, e.g. read() after open(,O_FLATDIR).
If you hate the behavior, put a 2-line shell script around tail, cat, and whatever other programs you want that aborts the operation if the argument's a directory.
There are too many programs in unix tool set which requires such fixing, and it's better to fix them directly instead of total wrapping, isn't it? If you require compatibility with bugs of ancient crap, you'll work on crap.
/netch
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