Neil Bothwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello Alexander Skwar, > >> Yes, it's very bad that Gentoo scripts don't limit themselves to >> POSIX. Another windmill to fight against. > > Artificially limiting yourself to the lowest common denominator when > better options are available is bad, and discourages evolution.
Well, depends. Making use of non standard options when standard compliant options are avialable, is no-good evolution. It very much tastes of the way Microsoft handles standards. Eg. have a look at how MS treated Java or HTML (granted, Netscape wasn't much better either). Back to tar: Why use "tar -j" in scripts, when "bzip2 | tar" does the same thing? I very much disagree that "tar -j" is the "better" option here; in fact, I'd say that "bzip2 | tar" is the better option, as it works on a lot more systems than "tar -j" does. Heck, "tar -j" even does not work on all GNU tar implementations, as very old GNU tars don't have bzip2 support at all and -j wasn't always used for bzip2. > POSIX > specifies the minimum set of options and features, not the maximum. As > long as the standards aren't broken, nothing is wrong, and adding new, > useful and compatible features is one way that standards get improved. No, it's not. To improve a standard, you make sure that the standard gets amended and then you implement something. Not the other way around. Alexander Skwar -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
