file utility POSIX complience

[Jens Schweikhardt]

On Wed, Nov 01, 2006 at 11:06:44AM +0200, Baris Simsek wrote:
# Hi,
# 
# I was looking for the non-POSIX FreeBSD utilities from here:
# 
# http://people.freebsd.org/~schweikh/posix-utilities.html#file
# 
# He talks about -d -h and -M options currently not available.
# 
# And i did a quick source to find original related document of POSIX. I 
# met following PDFs may be interesting:
# 
# http://www.opengroup.org/rtforum/uploads/40/7319/POSIX_and_Linux_Application_Compatibility_v0.92_released_22_April_05.pdf
# 
# 9th page and 6th item says that:
# The Linux file utility is not required to support the ?M, ?h, ?d, and 
# the ?i options. The portable application shall not use these options.
# 
# Is there a contradiction between them?

No. The file utility POSIX spec is available here:
http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/file.html
As you see, the -d/h/m/M options are marked UP (part of User Portability
extension). Our -i option does something different from POSIX.

# I wonder that what jobs these options should perform?

See the Open Group's POSIX spec above.

# And is there any
# developer currently working on it?

Not that I know of. Volunteers welcome.

Regards,

	Jens
-- 
Jens Schweikhardt http://www.schweikhardt.net/
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)