On Sat, 27 Aug 2005, Ludovic Rousseau wrote: > Le Saturday 27 August 2005 à 03:17:29, Dag Wieers a écrit: > > On Fri, 26 Aug 2005, Leo Eraly wrote: > > > > > dconf can be called with the -o option > > > this gives the user the ability to specify a different > > > output file (default in /var/log/dconf/) > > > > > > dconf tries to create a file in /var/log/dconf. Maybe it should send its > > > output to stdout by default? > > > > > > Some files may not be readable by a normal user but the command should > > > not just stop with a "Permission denied". > > > > Writing it to standard out is not a good solution because it leaves it up > > to the user to provide a filename. Enforcing a proper filename that you > > can re-use by other tools is important for the simplicity of the program. > > > > (ie. you should be able to run just 'dconf' before or after you made > > important changes, nothing more complex) > > > > You can still let dconf send the output to standard output by doing: > > > > dconf -o- > > I really like the simplicity in Unix command line tools. stdout should > be the default output of any command like yours. > > If you want to redirect the output somewhere you can use "dconf > file" > (preferred since that is the standard Unix way to do that) or "dconf -ofile". > > If stdout is the default output you can use "dconf | grep whatever" > easily. > > But I will let you choose what you think is best.
Not everything in Unix uses stdout by default. Dconf is not meant as a general purpose tool that you run everytime to see the output. In fact you run it as few as possible (because running it stresses the system) and work on the log-files as much as possible to extract information. That is why you want a tool like dconf to write it to a known location, so that other Dconf-related tools can use those files without much hassle. Granted, the other Dconf related tools do not exist yet and currently you have to use zdiff/zgrep to make use of what Dconf collects and stores. The latest dconf-output is therefor not as important as previous updates, and there is no value in the latest (current) output without prior snapshots. That's why it is much more important to store it somewhere than having the output in your terminal. A program should reflect the most obvious usage-pattern (in most cases that is stdout), for Dconf printing to stdout is not very useful in the nomal usage pattern. Thanks for your input, I will add a few examples in the man-page that explain how to use the files that dconf generates in different scenarios to make this more clear. Kind regards, -- dag wieers, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]
