Re: stat vs. "-"

[Jim Meyering]

Eric Blake wrote:

> According to Jim Meyering on 9/15/2009 5:49 AM:
>> But couldn't, because stat didn't accept "-" as meaning standard input.
>> Here's a patch to make it do that (and make the above print what's 
>> displayed):
>>
>> This is just FYI.
>> Of course I'll add the usual NEWS, log and tests and post again later.
>
> Any progress on this?  It sounded like a nice idea.

Thanks for the reminder.  Here's why I've put it off:

stat has two modes of operation: the default is to interpret each
argument as a file on which to call stat or lstat.
Then there's the --file-system (-f) option.

The "-" == stdin approach makes sense for the first case.
Since I couldn't think of a use case for the second,
I was debating to implement it there regardless,
for the sake of consistency.  Otherwise, I'd have to
document that it works only *without* -f.

As I write this, however, I'm inclined to be consistent,
even a plausible use case for -f.
Besides, before I encountered the need for "stat -", I might not
have been able to come up with a good use case either.