Re: [hackers] [sbase] [PATCH] *sum: Ignore -b and -t flags

From: Laslo Hunhold <dev_AT_frign.de>
Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2020 13:09:38 +0100

On Wed, 1 Jan 2020 22:04:47 -0800
Michael Forney <mforney_AT_mforney.org> wrote:

Dear Michael,

> These tools are not standardized, but these flags are supported in all
> implementations I'm aware of (coreutils, busybox), and are
> occasionally used in scripts.
>
> These flags are only meaningful on operating systems which
> differentiate between text and binary files, so just ignore them.

I would print something on stderr. POSIX is ignored often enough and a
ton of scripts are using the cancerous GNU extensions and other
extensions. If we just "ignore" them, there is no learning effect or
push for change for script writers, so maybe we could add a warning
while we ignore them, so when you run a script that makes use of these
mostly useless flags (which we could also tell them), then this might a
push in a good direction. What do you think?

With best regards

Laslo
Received on Thu Jan 02 2020 - 13:09:38 CET