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Xref: sserve comp.unix.programmer:5834 comp.unix.bsd:1954 Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!caen!nic.umass.edu!amherst!amhux1.amherst.edu!twpierce From: twpierce@amhux1.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer,comp.unix.bsd Subject: Hard Links, and Possible "man" Bug Message-ID: <1992Jul14.211906.24151@amhux2.amherst.edu> Date: 14 Jul 92 21:19:06 GMT Article-I.D.: amhux2.1992Jul14.211906.24151 Sender: usenet@amhux2.amherst.edu (USENET News System) Followup-To: poster Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA Lines: 28 Nntp-Posting-Host: amhux1.amherst.edu I've found (though I'm sure I'm not the only one) what I consider to be a bug in our DEC-supplied BSD man. We're running Ultrix V4.2 (Rev. 96) on a DECstation 3100. My problem with man started when I noticed that on our system, supplying the full pathname when invoking "apropos" or "whatis" causes these programs to behave as if you'd invoked "man" instead. Looking into this irregularity further, it was pointed out to me that apropos, whatis, and man are all linked to a single binary. Upon invocation, this program first checks the name of the command that invoked it, and if "apropos" or "whatis" calls the routines executed by "man -k" and "man -f". However, since I'd supplied the full pathname for apropos, man found that the string "/usr/ucb/apropos" was unequal to the strings "apropos" or "whatis" and assumed that I had invoked man. I've fixed the problem locally, but it led me to wonder about the advantages of linking together distinct programs like these. I can understand it in the case of different programs which perform _very_ similar functions, but apropos and whatis work very differently from man. So apart from saving a little disk space, why link them together rather than writing separate programs to perform these functions? -- ____ Tim Pierce / "You mean there are TWO of you, Pierce? \ / twpierce@amherst.edu / God help us all." \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) / -- Major Charles Emerson Winchester III