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From: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Question about GETOPT(3)
Message-ID: <1989Nov29.114601.8500@gdt.bath.ac.uk>
Date: 29 Nov 89 11:46:01 GMT
References: <7043@ficc.uu.net> <110@amix.commodore.com> <7077@ficc.uu.net> <118@amix.commodore.com> <7118@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: exspes@gdr.bath.ac.uk (P E Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol c/o University of Bath
Lines: 14

In article <7118@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>And it'd remain so. You might have problems if you have a program called
>'1', '2', and so on. That's pretty unlikely.

Actually, Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike suggest such a program (shell
script) in 'The Unix Programming Environment'.  Basically, it invokes
print with an argument of -$0 -- that is, if invoked as '2' it filters
its stdin into 2 columns, if invoked as '3' into 3 columns, ...  To
'implement' a new number of columns you just add another link to the
script.  Doesn't half pollute your ~/lib namespace ...

-- 
 Paul Smee, Univ. of Bristol Comp. Centre, Bristol BS8 1TW (Tel +44 272 303132)
 Smee@bristol.ac.uk   :-)   (..!uunet!ukc!gdr.bath.ac.uk!exspes if you HAVE to)