*BSD News Article 69622


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Making a multi-volume backup to /dev/fd0 using tar
Date: 28 May 1996 06:49:59 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Message-ID: <4oe7mn$3hd@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <DrpIsx.y7@ecf.toronto.edu> <4nq2e0$a6n@sidhe.hsc.fr>
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  <4o9cf8$1iq@uriah.heep.sax.de> <pmh.833198743@ardbeg.islay.sub.org>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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pmh@islay.sub.org (Patrick M. Hausen) wrote:

> >The fact that GNU tar supports historical (inconsistent) practice
> >doesn't mean you should publically recommend it.
> 
> Pardon?
> 
> I thought, tar's syntax was
> 
> tar <options> <arguments to the options> <file> ...

Nevertheless, this is inconsistent with the remainder of the system.
Why teaching people old legacy inconsistency (mention: yes, teach:
no).

> So it should not matter, if you type
> 
> tar cvfb /dev/bla 9k ...
> tar vbfc 9k /dev/bla ...
> tar cfbv /dev/bla 9k ...

But it does matter if you prepend a hyphen.

Many of the advanced (GNU) tar options don't fit into the legacy
scheme anyway.

> The same, IMHO, holds for find. Who invented that brain damaged -x and -d ?
> Find syntax is
> 
> find <path-list> <predicate-list>
> 
> - no options here. What's wrong with 

Nope.

find [options] <path-list> <predicate-list>

There's a big difference between an element in the predicate-list, and
an option.  The predicates apply to each matching entry, while the
options are in effect before the find starts.  (That doesn't explain
why the -xdev primary is missing though, since many implementations
happen to have it.)

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)