Everything you say is correct, and may even be a word to the wise, as it were -- but there are always new command line apps made by people who haven't been thoroughly exposed to the true Unix/Linux/Posix way, and need to have that kind of thing explained. [1] [2] [3]
Which is to say that your comments are not self-evident to everyone, by any means.
Example: less(1) was eventually fitted with the -R flag to allow highlighting to be passed by pipe, to make it friendly to piping from highlight-producing apps rather than its default highlight-unfriendly stripping of input controls/escapes.
Benign intentions with regard to files sometimes require a little more thought to be simultaneously friendly to pipes, except for the simplest of plain text apps.
(I'm not trying to make a big point, but I just rediscovered 'less -R' out of necessity today. So, I was pondering some of these issues)
Worth a re-read for everyone (and I worry that these things may be in the process of being forgotten):
[4] Raymond didn't invent any of this, but he explained it very nicely, IMHO.
Edit: P.S. the above is somewhat meandering, and is sure to be criticized because simple equivalence of piped and file input is the most important thing, which I agree with -- but I was mixing that with a secondary point because of what I was doing today. Sorry. "I did not have time to make this letter shorter" etc.
DougMerritt|7 years ago
Which is to say that your comments are not self-evident to everyone, by any means.
Example: less(1) was eventually fitted with the -R flag to allow highlighting to be passed by pipe, to make it friendly to piping from highlight-producing apps rather than its default highlight-unfriendly stripping of input controls/escapes.
Benign intentions with regard to files sometimes require a little more thought to be simultaneously friendly to pipes, except for the simplest of plain text apps.
(I'm not trying to make a big point, but I just rediscovered 'less -R' out of necessity today. So, I was pondering some of these issues)
Worth a re-read for everyone (and I worry that these things may be in the process of being forgotten):
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy#Eric_Raymond's... and the book:
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Unix_Programming
[4] Raymond didn't invent any of this, but he explained it very nicely, IMHO.
Edit: P.S. the above is somewhat meandering, and is sure to be criticized because simple equivalence of piped and file input is the most important thing, which I agree with -- but I was mixing that with a secondary point because of what I was doing today. Sorry. "I did not have time to make this letter shorter" etc.
jstanley|7 years ago