[TUHS] [OT] Re: earliest Unix roff

[Arthur Krewat]

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):
>>> 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."?
> Rob Pike
>