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From: dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: I'm learning UNIX and I have a simple question
Message-ID: <1991Jun22.195705.3287@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 22 Jun 91 19:57:05 GMT
References: <1991Jun21.144113.22326@mtune.att.com> <16486@smoke.brl.mil>
Organization: Sequoia Peripherals, Inc.
Lines: 16

>In <1991Jun21.144113.22326@mtune.att.com> jrw@mtune.att.com (Jim Webb) writes:
>>In the SVR3.2 and similiar universes, you can also say 'who -q -n4'

Doug Gwyn replies:
>Yeah, but that sort of thing is problematic.  Different utilities have
>different options to accomplish the same kind of effect (in this case,
>formatting in multiple columns), when they have the options at all.

And besides, what does who have to do with formatting anyway? 

If I were writing who, it would never occur to me to add options to handle 
formatting. I would just worry about getting the user the information e
requested in a flexible format and have em take care of formatting it.

I'm not a mind reader. How should I know what a given user wants eir
output to look like?