Re: du and wc should be able to read arguments from a file

[Jim Meyering]

Dave Gotwisner <address@hidden> wrote:
> Rather than assume it just takes a list of files, I would suggest strongly 
> that
> whoever chooses
> to implement this (if anyone does), they also allow it to take other options 
> as
> part of the file.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I see no benefit
in taking option strings from an input file.
And there'd be a drawback in that one would have to handle
quoting differences since there'd no longer be a shell in the loop.
E.g. specifying --exclude=\*.bak on the command line would work fine,
but putting --exclude=\*.bak in a file would require that du perform
the job of the shell in removing a layer of quotes.

The alternative of having different (no quotes needed) syntax in
the file seems wrong, too.