On 01/03/2014 10:02 AM, Pádraig Brady wrote: >>> It depends on whether the file has a trailing newline. >> >> Per POSIX, 'head' is only required to operate on "text files" >> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/head.html >> and a "text file" must either be empty or have a trailing newline: >> http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_397 >> >> So this is not necessarily a bug. That said, since POSIX doesn't >> specify what we should do, we are free to make it behave differently. > > BTW I still don't think POSIX is specifying that text files without > a trailing newline are not text files. > > It states that text files can have zero or more lines,
Where "lines" is also a well-defined POSIX term: http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_206 > implying that the trailing new line is optional. Wrong. The trailing newline character is mandatory in text files. -- Eric Blake eblake redhat com +1-919-301-3266 Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org
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