Re: Suggestion for mkdir (original) (raw)

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From: Renich Bon Ciric
Subject: Re: Suggestion for mkdir
Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 22:02:11 -0600

On Wed, Nov 20, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Bob Proulx <address@hidden> wrote:

I thought I would say a few words in defense of POSIX. Why is it this way? Because the that was the way the command was originally written to work. There are a zillion small behaviors like this from when people wrote a tool (mkdir, mv, cp, etc.) each of the different times any of the tools were written. Every time someone wrote a new version of one of the Unix utilities (because the original was closed and proprietary) then it would have its own different quirks. This led to every Unix-like system being different from each other in the zillion different ways. The classic case being SysV versus BSD but now that would include GNU too. It was very hard to write a script that would run the same on different systems.

The purpose of POSIX was to say enough was enough. Stop the proliferation of differences. Document the existing behavior and standardize upon it so that scripts could be written portably. As long as they only used the standard behavior then they could count on being able to operate the same on every standard platform.

And so we have things like mkdir. It conforms to the standard because that is a good thing. The standard says what it says because originally it documented the existing behavior of the then current systems. And this is good because the alternative of having divergent behavior everywhere is worse.

Thank you for your words. I get it. It's kind of harder to suggest modifications to a standard though. What is the correct path on suggesting something that is clearly better; at least from my POV?

-- It's hard to be free... but I love to struggle. Love isn't asked for; it's just given. Respect isn't asked for; it's earned! Renich Bon Ciric

http://www.woralelandia.com/ http://www.introbella.com/