Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!sun-barr!apple!vsi1!wyse!bob
From: bob@wyse.wyse.com (Bob McGowen Wyse Technology Training)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: recursive grep
Message-ID: <2403@wyse.wyse.com>
Date: 6 Sep 89 17:57:55 GMT
References: <13710@polyslo.calpoly.edu> <144000002@cdp> <2390@auspex.auspex.com>
Sender: news@wyse.wyse.com
Reply-To: bob@wyse.UUCP (Bob McGowen Wyse Technology Training)
Organization: Wyse Technology
Lines: 33

In article <2390@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>
> >I wouldn't complain about xargs not being capable of handling
> >filenames with spaces and newlines.  There are a lot of other
> >programs that will break under the same circumstances.
>
>In which case I'd not only continue to complain about "xargs", but
>complain about those other programs as well....

The shell (as well as many other utilities) is line oriented, which
means that it uses whitespace to delimit input lines.  Even though
you can quote these characters (as well as the wild cards) and get
them into file names it is not something that is recommended for
obvious reasons.

Since you can create them with the shell quoting mechanisms you
can access them from the shell with the same methods, but these
are not available to most other utilities.  So the question
becomes one of how you would separate one name from another if you
were not using whitespace?

If you want to have spaces or newlines in filenames (which is
perfectly OK, the kernel doesn't care) you would have to consider
writing a new shell, a la the macintosh interface.  Otherwise we
have to live with what we've got (which I am perfectly willing and
happy to do).

I guess this could be considered a flame though I do not intend it to be.

Bob McGowan  (standard disclaimer, these are my own ...)
Customer Education, Wyse Technology, San Jose, CA
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