*BSD News Article 31314


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From: iiitac@uk.ac.swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Subject: Re: Linux vs *BSD (new twist)
Message-ID: <1994Jun6.095836.5606@uk.ac.swan.pyr>
Organization: Swansea University College
References: <2smc4m$daj@Mercury.mcs.com> <WAYNE.94Jun3224657@backbone.uucp> <2spm91$1b2@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 1994 09:58:36 GMT
Lines: 21

In article <2spm91$1b2@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM> peter@Starbase.NeoSoft.COM (Peter da Silva) writes:
>The difference is that "ls -F" doesn't mean "ls" has to suck in termlib.
>Sometimes extra features are a bad idea, when they lead to code bloat. So
>far Linux itself seems to have avoided this common GNU disease (at least
>when compared with commercial UNIX), but with this sort of attitude it's
>not going to last.

Actually since the termlib is shared it takes no application space, and since
without the colour option being used it never calls the term library it never
gets paged in off disk (if its on disk at the time) so the actual impact
is pretty close to zero.

The no-feature attitude is also the reason why half the shells Im forced to
use on other machines don't have sensible command line editing. On the other
hand some programs take it too far (Emacs for one). 

Alan