[Bulk] Re: The name "grep"

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Mon, 2014-07-07 at 18:00 +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
> On 07/07/2014 17:28, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> >
> >> On Mon, 07 Jul 2014 14:21:04 +0100, Arthur Chance wrote:
> >>> 	dd [options] [ infile [ outfile ]]
> >
> > This way users by accident could mistake the infile with the outfile.
> >
> > We dislike to randomly screw up infile and outfile, so IMO it makes
> > sense to force if= and of= "operands".
> 
> There's no problem about which file is input and which output with cp or 
> mv, so why on earth would it be a problem with a sane version of dd?
> 
> If you really need a hand holding indication of which file is which,
> 
> 	dd -i $infile -o $outfile
> 
> would be in the Unix spirit, unlike the existing form. And with an 
> interactive shell you could use filename completion which fails with the 
> existing dd.

Yes, I agree with "dd [options] -i infile -o outfile" - Polytropon, but
there's a difference between cp/mv and dd.

You can not copy or move e.g. a MBR, but you can dd a MBR. A superuser
could damage the system with mv and cp too, but dd anyway is operating
on another level.

2 Cents,
Ralf

PS:

Sometimes the FreeBSD syntax IMO goes much to far, for example I
compared ls from FreeBSD and Linux.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD freebsd 9.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE #0 r243825: Tue Dec  4 09:23:10 UTC 2012     root at farrell.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  amd64
$ ls -hAl ~/.xsession-errors
-rw-------  1 rocketmouse  rocketmouse   4.0k Jul  7 19:20 /home/rocketmouse/.xsession-errors
$ ls .xsession-errors -hAl
ls: -hAl: No such file or directory
.xsession-errors
$

[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ uname -a
Linux archlinux 3.15.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Jul 1 07:32:45 CEST 2014 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ls -hAl ~/.xsession-errors
-rw------- 1 rocketmouse rocketmouse 1.4K Jul  7 19:26 /home/rocketmouse/.xsession-errors
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$ ls .xsession-errors -hAl
-rw------- 1 rocketmouse rocketmouse 1.4K Jul  7 19:26 .xsession-errors
[rocketmouse at archlinux ~]$