Re: Proposed new feature: head --show-truncation

[Paul Jarc]

Ed Avis <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Stepan Kasal wrote:
>> I mean that trivial shell script which doesn't use "head" should
>> also count.
>
> No, because by that argument at least half of the classic Unix
> utilities would be eliminated.

No.  If head, tail, etc., can be reimplemented in
sed/awk/Perl/whatever, then that is possibly an argument to
reimplement them that way, but it is not an argument to get rid of
them altogether.  Regardless of how they are implemented, they are
useful.

Similarly, the fact that this feature of yours can be scripted in sed
does not mean that the code should not exist, but it suggests that sed
may be a good way to do it - i.e., the code may not belong in head
itself, and may not belong in coreutils.

> I am hoping to consider whether the --show-truncation flag makes
> head more powerful, in that it couldn't be emulated by the existing
> head plus a couple of lines of shell.

It would indeed add something to head that can't already be done with
head.  But that does not imply that head is the right place to add
this code.


paul