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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: <1991Jun23.043523.21037@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 23 Jun 91 04:35:23 GMT
References: <16486@smoke.brl.mil> <1991Jun22.195705.3287@leland.Stanford.EDU> <16503@smoke.brl.mil>
Organization: Sequoia Peripherals, Inc.
Lines: 21

In article <16503@smoke.brl.mil> gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>In article <1991Jun22.195705.3287@leland.Stanford.EDU> dkeisen@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dave Eisen) writes:
>>And besides, what does who have to do with formatting anyway? 
>
>Yes, that's a proper designer's perspective.  The user, though, is
>normally just as happy to use the extra option as to use any other
>solution.

I agree with you Doug, but how is anyone supposed to remember that who 
happens to have this -n4 option? I program on a UNIX system every day of 
my life and I had no idea that who has this option. There is no way an 
occasional, casual user of UNIX would know it.

It would be one thing if UNIX commands used options consistently and
*all* commands used -n to indicate number of columns of output, but 
with the current mish-mash of command line options for different programs,
I don't see that adding a -n option to who gives a user anything.

It is much easier to associate pr with whatever (admittedly, relatively 
simple) formatting you want done than it is to try to remember the -n4 
option to who and the -q4 option to foo and the -w4 option to bar.