Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!mcsun!ukc!axion!delluk!tim From: tim@delluk.uucp (Tim Wright) Newsgroups: comp.bugs.sys5 Subject: Re: small bug in who(1) of SVR3 Message-ID: Date: 14 Jan 91 12:41:56 GMT References: <1991Jan10.130738.10194@unhtel.uucp> <14818@smoke.brl.mil> <18896@rpp386.cactus.org> <1991Jan12.215911.20701@kithrup.COM> Sender: usenet@delluk.uucp (Usenet posting login) Organization: Dell Computer Corp., Bracknell, UK Lines: 31 In <1991Jan12.215911.20701@kithrup.COM> sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) writes: >In article <18896@rpp386.cactus.org> jfh@rpp386.cactus.org (John F Haugh II) writes: >>Perhaps Doug is right - perhaps one command should have one narrowly >>defined purpose. On the other hand, what is preventing "users" from >>being a simple link to "who -q"? >I was not aware that any version of *nix allowed links, hard or soft, to >allow options to be specified. 'uptime' and 'w' under 4.1BSD are the same program. Even more fun write a little C program to allow you to run any program with a different argv array. Try running the v7 /bin/mail under 4.1BSD. with no argv[0] - the result: % xa /bin/mail Puke! % Honest !! (I'm not sure of the punctuation - it was a while ago). >If you mean, as I suspect you do, that who examine argv[0] to see what it >should do, well, I guess you're also advocating everything in /bin be the >same program, that only examines argv[0] to find out what it should do. >Right? No, but once upon a time in a land before shared libraries it was pretty reasonable to throw graphics (e.g. X-style) programs together into one large monolithic one - that is if you wanted any disk space left :-) Tim -- Tim Wright, Dell Computer Corp. (UK) | Email address Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 1RW | Domain: tim@dell.co.uk Tel: +44-344-860456 | Uucp: ...!ukc!delluk!tim "What's the problem? You've got an IQ of six thousand, haven't you?"