Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!udel!haven!decuac!hussar.dco.dec.com!mjr
From: mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: command arguments
Keywords: OHMYGOD! What happened to my file! F***!
Message-ID: <1990Nov8.144527.10834@decuac.dec.com>
Date: 8 Nov 90 14:45:27 GMT
References: <714@isgtec.UUCP>
Sender: news@decuac.dec.com (Network News)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corp., Washington Ultrix Resource Center
Lines: 19

In article <714@isgtec.UUCP> robert@isgtec.uucp (Robert Osborne) writes:

	Indeed, the manual page is wrong. SPR it.

>2)  Why on ^C does it truncate the file?  (Nice error handling :-)

	It's probably not that ^C truncated the file, but when sort
opened the file for output, it truncated it then. When you hit ^C it
just exitted, leaving the file already truncated.

>3)  Do any other Ultrix commands behave this way???
>    (ignoring option fields, dangerous cleanup, etc.)

	When the manual and the software disagree, the manual's wrong. :)
I don't think "dangerous cleanup" is really what happened - what happened
is more along the lines of: if you type "rm -rf /*" and then hit ^C,
don't expect it to "clean up" for you either. :) All UNIXes are like that.

mjr.