Xref: utzoo comp.unix.wizards:9339 comp.unix.questions:7578
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!keith
From: keith@seismo.CSS.GOV (Keith Bostic)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: grep replacement
Message-ID: <44370@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV>
Date: 13 Jun 88 19:12:20 GMT
References: <7962@alice.UUCP>
Organization: Center for Seismic Studies, Arlington, VA
Lines: 31

In article <7962@alice.UUCP>, andrew@alice.UUCP writes:

> 22) support a filename of - to mean standard input.
> 	a unix without /dev/stdin is largely bogus but as a sop to the poor
> 	barstards having to work on BSD, gre will support -
> 	as stdin (at least for a while).
>
> Andrew Hume
> research!andrew

A few comments:

     -- As far I'm aware, V9 is the only system that has "/dev/stdin" at the
	moment.  For those who haven't heard of it, V9 is a research version
	of UN*X developed and in use at the Computing Science Research Center,
	a part of AT&T Bell Laboratories, and available to a small number of
	universities.  It was preceded by V8, which, interestingly enough, was
	built on top of 4.1BSD.

     -- System V does not suppport "/dev/stdin".

     -- The next full release of BSD will contain "/dev/stdin" and friends.
	It is not part of the 4.3-tahoe release because it requires changes
	to stdio.  I do not expect, however, commands that currently support
	the "-" syntax to change, for compatibility reasons.  V9 itself
	continues to support such commands.

To sum up, let's try and keep this, if not actually constructive, at least
bearing some distant relationship to the facts.

Keith Bostic