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From: mjs@hpfcso.HP.COM (Marc Sabatella)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: Long filenames on HPUX 6.2
Message-ID: <7370019@hpfcso.HP.COM>
Date: 24 Oct 89 21:06:31 GMT
References: <4243@yunexus.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA
Lines: 21

>The argument for backward compatibility is strong, but I have yet to
>find a case where both old functionality and new couldn't be provided
>*somehow*.  For example, by allowing reading of old formats but writing
>of new ones by default, with options for controlling this behvaiour.  If
>this can't be done compatibly without something breaking, then provide a
>different command, called (say) nar ("new ar"), which expands the
>feature set of ar, and brings it up to date.

This is certainly true, we could have "ar" and even "ld", "nm", and all other
related tools know about the change.  The problem as I perceive it is changing
a documented file format is considered a no-no, as people out there have
written their own code (yes they have) which know file formats.

In any case, the combination of "difficult to do" + "breaks user code which
depends on our documented file formats" + "workaround trivial" adds up to
"will not fix".

--------------
Marc Sabatella
HP Colorado Language Lab (CoLL)
marc@hpmonk