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Re: Question about an TODO item.
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: Question about an TODO item. |
Date: |
Sun, 09 Nov 2003 19:44:30 +0100 |
Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote:
> 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.
But then, what?
Require that --null also be specified whenever --files-from is?
Maybe, though it's not pretty.
Or accept --files-from without --null and read newline-separated
file names. I'd rather not do the latter, because I think many
people would end up using that easier-to-use (but not robust) interface.
> 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.
Right.
> This should probably be mentioned in the documentation somewhere.
Yep :-)