Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!mailrus!umix!husc6!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!necntc!dandelion!ulowell!page
From: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Verbose output (was: perl patch 18 makes perl uncompilable)
Message-ID: <2907@swan.ulowell.edu>
Date: 16 Feb 88 19:44:56 GMT
References: <2641@dciem.UUCP> <513@hscfvax.harvard.edu>
Reply-To: page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page)
Organization: University of Lowell, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 18

mohamed@hscfvax.harvard.edu (Mohamed_el_Lozy) wrote:
>more in the UNIX tradition would be no message at all unless it failed.

Back when we only had top speed 300 baud terminals, this was a good
thing.  Now, it's a good thing when you have filters and scripts
running.  But for the average non-batch command on 19.2 terminals and
dedicated workstations, this isn't such a good thing.  You don't ever
patch programs within a shell script, right?  Or have patch as part of
a pipeline...let it be verbose.

More designers of UNIX tools should note this.

Oh, and       patch args | tee patch.out | less      doesn't count.

..Bob
-- 
Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept.  page@swan.ulowell.edu  ulowell!page
"I don't know such stuff.  I just do eyes."  -- from 'Blade Runner'