19 Sep
2019
19 Sep
'19
6:50 p.m.
KatolaZ:
We can discuss whether the split was necessary or
"right" in the first
instance, as we could discuss whether it was good or not for cat(1) to
leave Murray Hill in 1979 with no options and come back from Berkley
with a source code doubled in size and 9 options in 1982.
We needn't discuss that (though of course there are opinions and
mine are the correct ones), but in the interest of historic accuracy,
I should point out by 1979 (V7) cat had developed a single option -u
to turn off stdio buffering.
Sometime before 1984 or so, that option was removed, and cat was
simplified to just
while ((n = read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf))) > 0)
write(1, buf, n)
(error checking elided for clarity)
which worked just fine for the rest of the life of the Research
system.
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(Three cats, no options)
19 Sep
19 Sep
7 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
On 09/19/19 14:50, Norman Wilson wrote (in part):
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my
humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Who said "Cat came back from Berkeley waving flags."?
N.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(Three cats, no options)
8:18 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 03:00:16PM -0400, Nemo Nusquam wrote:
On 09/19/19 14:50, Norman Wilson wrote (in part):
Rob Pike
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my
humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Who said "Cat came back from Berkeley waving flags."? 
8:33 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
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.
On 9/19/2019 4:18 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 03:00:16PM -0400, Nemo Nusquam
wrote:
On 09/19/19 14:50, Norman Wilson wrote (in
part):
Rob Pike
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my
humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Who said "Cat came back
from Berkeley waving flags."? 
8:39 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
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
9:46 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
On Thu, 19 Sep 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
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.
I would argue that the more "Unix" way to do it is have the multiple
binaries. One job, one tool, and chain them together to make bigger
tools.
-uso.
9:51 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 05:46:13PM -0400, Steve Nickolas wrote:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2019, Arthur Krewat wrote:
That worked when we were running on 64K machines. Modern machines do
a lot more and the problem space is not always a pipeline.
You aren't going to write a web server by spawning
cat | encrypt | http_servlet
That doesn't scale. At all.
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.
I would argue that the more "Unix" way to do it is have the multiple
binaries. One job, one tool, and chain them together to make bigger tools. 
8:42 p.m.
New subject: earliest Unix roff
On Thursday, September 19, 2019, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 19, 2019 at 03:00:16PM -0400, Nemo Nusquam
wrote:
http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/
--Andy
On 09/19/19 14:50, Norman Wilson wrote (in
part):
Rob Pike
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my
humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Who said "Cat came back from Berkeley waving flags."? 
10:44 p.m.
New subject: [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff
This was my fault, and it happened because I confronted DMR about the -u
flag for cat. He said it was there because it seemed important that cat be
writable in stdio, which was new at the time. I agreed but said the point
had been made and avoiding unnecessary flags was a higher goal. So cat was
simplified to do what it said, no more and no less, with read and write and
no nonsense.
-rob
On Fri, Sep 20, 2019 at 4:51 AM Norman Wilson <norman(a)oclsc.org> wrote:
KatolaZ:
We can discuss whether the split was necessary or
"right" in the first
instance, as we could discuss whether it was good or not for cat(1) to
leave Murray Hill in 1979 with no options and come back from Berkley
with a source code doubled in size and 9 options in 1982.
We needn't discuss that (though of course there are opinions and
mine are the correct ones), but in the interest of historic accuracy,
I should point out by 1979 (V7) cat had developed a single option -u
to turn off stdio buffering.
Sometime before 1984 or so, that option was removed, and cat was
simplified to just
while ((n = read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf))) > 0)
write(1, buf, n)
(error checking elided for clarity)
which worked just fine for the rest of the life of the Research
system.
So it's true that BSD added needless (in my humble but correct
opinion) options, but not that it had none before they touched it.
Unless all those other programs were stuffed into cat in an earlier
Berkeley system, but I don't think they were.
Norman Wilson
Toronto ON
(Three cats, no options)
1674
days inactive
1674
days old
8 comments
8 participants
participants (8)
-
Andy Kosela -
Arthur Krewat -
Jon Steinhart -
Larry McVoy -
Nemo Nusquam -
Norman Wilson -
Rob Pike -
Steve Nickolas