Re: head -c39

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> Joerg Schilling <address@hidden> wrote:
>> If your head program accepts -c39, I would call this a bug.
>
> It's a long-standing feature of GNU head:

And it's not a bug.  POSIX has never specified the behavior of "head
-c39", and GNU head is allowed to treat it like "head -39c" if it
chooses, as an extension.  Also, POSIX 1003.2-1992 required support
for "tail -39c" with similar semantics, so it's quite plausible to
support this extension from a consistency point of view.

(In this message I'm setting "Reply-to" to address@hidden since
this part of the thread really belongs there.)