Re: Question about an TODO item.

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> Maybe `--files-from', since GNU tar uses that, but those names
> aren't separated with NUL bytes.
> 
> Other ideas?

tar uses --files-from=NAME (-T NAME) to read files from NAME, and a
separate option --null to say that the file names are NUL-terminated
rather than newline-terminated.  cpio also uses -0 to mean --null.  So
for consistency with these other tools I'd suggest two options,
--files-from and --null, rather than combining them into a single
option.

I assume that the only reason these options need to be added to du and
wc (as opposed to saying "just use xargs") is that these programs
print totals and can reasonably be applied to tons of arguments.  This
should probably be mentioned in the documentation somewhere.