Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!eci386!ecicrl!ecijmm!jmm
From: jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: recursive grep
Message-ID: <899@ecijmm.UUCP>
Date: 11 Sep 89 02:00:52 GMT
References: <13710@polyslo.calpoly.edu> <144000002@cdp> <2390@auspex.auspex.com> <2403@wyse.wyse.com> <2434@auspex.auspex.com>
Reply-To: jmm@ecijmm.UUCP (John Macdonald)
Organization: R. H. Lathwell Associates, Elegant Communications, Inc.
Lines: 25

In article <2434@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
| [...]
|
|In other words, the fact that it's inconvenient or impossible to use
|file names containing certain characters in *some* programs cannot be
|used as an excuse for not fixing at least some other programs -
|including, as noted, "xargs" - from being able to handle them.  Or, to
|quote the Robustness Principle cited in at least one RFC: "Be
|conservative in what you send; be liberal in what you accept from
|others;" the latter part means "be liberal enough to accept file names
|containing funny characters, since some funny character may decide to
|create a file with such a name."

It is easy to get that definition of liberal while the current discussion
about "white and control characters in filenames" is going on.  However,
in a different context, one might consider it to be liberal to allow
free form input (e.g. accepting multi-column ls output, user-typed
input with multiple files per line and unnoticed trailing whitespace, etc.).

Of course, this is the sort of situation that leads to feeping creaturism
- (xargs -n for null-delimited names; xargs -l for line delimted names;
xargs -f for free format white delimited names; watch this space for the
next exciting option appearing soon on a command line near you).
-- 
John Macdonald