20 Sep
2019
20 Sep
'19
2:39 a.m.
Arthur Krewat writes:
Serious question:
Which is better, creating a whole new binary to put in /usr/bin to do a
single task, or add a flag to cat?
Which is better, a proliferation of binaries w/standalone source code,
or a single code tree that can handle slightly different tasks and save
space?
:)
art k.
PS: Using argv[0] (as in a symbolic link) to alter a program's behavior
instead of using flags is cheating on the above test.
I would argue the first. In the case of current linux cat, I would make a
separate utility to number lines, a separate utility to squeeze out repeated
empty blank lines, a separate utility to show non printing characters that
might have an option to select the characters that would encompass -T. All of
these are useful utilities by themselves. Someone using a particular combo of
options a lot can always write their own scripts or use aliases. That's the
beauty of composability.
Jon