I don't remember whether late Research Unix had -if, but Plan 9 certainly did.

-rob


On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 10:06 AM segaloco via TUHS <tuhs@tuhs.org> wrote:
On Monday, September 16th, 2024 at 4:24 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Sep 17, 2024 at 09:16:17AM +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
>
> > On Mon, 16 Sep 2024, Lyndon Nerenberg (VE7TFX/VE6BBM) wrote:
> >
> > > Oh come on Rob, you should know that for anyone over the age of 50, the
> > > moment you see 'dd' your brain automatically switches to JCL mode.
> >
> > Indeed, but no "dd" I know has "-if" etc; is that a Penguin thing?
>
>
> Not a penguin thing on current xubuntu.

Never seen that either, POSIX doesn't suggest any support for that either, with this in the RATIONALE section:

---QUOTE---

The OPTIONS section is listed as "None" because there are no options recognized by historical dd utilities. Certainly, many of the operands could have been designed to use the Utility Syntax Guidelines, which would have resulted in the classic hyphenated option letters. In this version of this volume of POSIX.1-2024, dd retains its curious JCL-like syntax due to the large number of applications that depend on the historical implementation.

---END QUOTE---

- Matt G.