sed question...

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2007-09-25 22:49, Pollywog <lists-fbsd at shadypond.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 25 September 2007 22:21:48 Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
> > A word of caution there...
> >
> > If you plan to use GNU/Linux manpages for learning sed(1) be _very_
> > cautious for GNU/Linux-specific parts.  There are subtle, yet
> > possibly important differences between GNU/Linux sed and BSD sed.
>
> I am generally aware that sometimes there are differences between the
> utilities used with Linux and their BSD counterparts.  As for the
> differences themselves, do they exist because someone has "reinvented"
> the utilities or is there perhaps another reason?

The history and evolution of the BSD command-line tools and their GNU
counterparts is not exactly 'linear'.  Some of the BSD features were
implemented first in BSD sources, and then where reimplemented from
scratch in the GNU toolchain.  Others were implemented first in the GNU
tools and were ported to BSD.

Sometimes, when porting a certain feature from GNU tools to the BSD
world there were 'conflicts', i.e. an option letter was already taken,
or the way GNU tools did something didn't fit the existing "BSD way of
life" so it was retrofitted to the traditional BSD standards, to avoid
POLA violations for example.

It's not easy to answer precisely what the reasons for all the possible
differences are, but we can at least try if you have a particular
difference in mind :-)

- Giorgos