IEEE 1003.2 (was Re: fixing rm * (was: Worm/Passwords))

[Barry Margolin]

In article <9137 at smoke.BRL.MIL> gwyn at brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>) writes:
>Along these lines, does anybody know what on earth has possessed the
>IEEE 1003.2 working group?  They seem to be redesigning the standard
>utilities, in almost every case making them worse instead of better.
>They even had to debate whether "ar" should be usable with non-object
>module files!  (The latest minutes show that the -r option has been
>removed from "ar"; I sure hope that's not true!)  Somehow I missed
>getting into the ballotting group for 1003.2, but I sure hope that
>there are enough proponents of clean design to keep the current mess
>from becoming a standard that will adversely affect the systems we
>have to use in the future.

As I understand it, POSIX is just a minimum.  Just because POSIX
doesn't require a command to have a particular option or capability,
that doesn't mean that vendors must remove that feature.  So, the
point is not whether "ar" CAN be usable with non-object module files,
but whether it MUST be usable with them.  Sounds like they are
requiring "ar" to be enough to create object libraries, not a
general-purpose archiving utility.

Systems that aren't really Unix, but wish to provide POSIX
compatibility, will appreciate that IEEE 1003.2 isn't including all of
Unix in the standard.  Regarding this particular example, many already
have their own general-purpose archiving utility, so they wouldn't
need a full-featured "ar".


Barry Margolin
Thinking Machines Corp.

barmar at think.com
{uunet,harvard}!think!barmar