3 ms·
What drives whoever's the second person to implement such a flag to make it different? An explicit desire to inconvenience other "tribes" of computer users and
by jimmaswell 4y ago
What drives whoever's the second person to implement such a flag to make it different? An explicit desire to inconvenience other "tribes" of computer users and use the flag as a symbol of an in-group?
- dredmorbius 4y agoHow do you change, improve, or extend a standard if no changes may be permitted? What's keeping other implementations from adding these features?
- jimmaswell 4y agoChanges with a good reason are fine, but I don't see a good reason to make the same flag a different letter.
- tyingq 4y agoApparently a typo on the post I was replying to...there is no "-b" switch, it's "-c" or "--bytes" for gnu head. Though there are versions of head without one or both of "-c", "--bytes".
- scbrg 4y agoFollowing a convention already established in the local ecosystem, presumably. Though in this case I think previous posters are mistaken. My GNU implementation of head supports -c and not -b. Perhaps it's the fact that the longopt is --bytes that caused the confusion.