Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!mundamutti.cs.mu.OZ.AU!kre From: kre@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Robert Elz) Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5 Subject: Re: small bug in who(1) of SVR3 Message-ID: Date: 13 Jan 91 17:41:06 GMT References: <9101091725.AA15013@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> <1991Jan10.130738.10194@unhtel.uucp> <14818@smoke.brl.mil> <18896@rpp386.cactus.org> <1991Jan13.004843.18650@zoo.toronto.edu> Sender: news@cs.mu.oz.au Lines: 23 henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <18896@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) >writes: >>... Why should I be forced to... use pipes (ala "who | cut -d' .... >I don't care how easy it was to add the "-q" option, it was a waste of the >programmer's time. A shell program using pipes could have been written in >seconds, solving the problem without messing around with "who". This is sheer religious fervour taken to extremes ... the simply fact is that "who" is one of the most baroque commands in unix, if it had originally been more like (say) "ls", where "who" gave a simple list of users, and "who -l" gave similar output to the traditional "who", no-one would even think of complaining about it - but because it wasn't originally done that way, it's apparently heresy to suggest that anything be changed. Now I've never seen a "who" with a "-q" option, so I can't comment on how well the change was thought out (comments here make me suspect not well at all, but that's hearsay only), but the question of whether a change should be made at all is simply not suitably answered by "never". kre