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> A lot of legacy has been shed. An example I remember from the UNIX to Plan 9 command translation page[1]: UNIX Plan 9 head
by telemachos 14y ago
> A lot of legacy has been shed.
An example I remember from the UNIX to Plan 9 command translation page[1]:
UNIX Plan 9
head sed 10q
[1]: http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/unix_to_plan_9_command_translation/index.html http://www.plan9.bell-labs.com/wiki/plan9/unix_to_plan_9_com...
- DeepDuh 14y agoLooking at this list I can't really tell why this is supposed to be better. Shedding complexity ok - but getting rid of many shorthands that are there for a reason? It reminds me of how Java wanted to replace printf with a ridiculously complex string formatting system.
- sp332 14y agoThe point is that "head" on your system is not the same as "sed 10q". There are two different codebases. By default head shows the first 10 lines but you can change it with flags etc. Well why bother when you already have sed to do that? head -n 5 sed 5q For most cases, head is not a shortcut. 10 is just a special case.
- DeepDuh 14y agoI agree with that change. I don't with many others.
- telemachos 14y agoGetting rid of good things would be bad, but is sed 10q really "ridiculously complex"?
- DeepDuh 14y agoNo, but $home instead of ~ is, IMO.
- telemachos 14y agoAh, fair enough. I really only meant to cite the one example - since I found it so striking when I first saw it. (It had never occurred to me to use sed for head that way.)
- ori_b 14y agoThe thing is that ~ is special shell magic. $home is an environment variable, and is consistently expanded as such. Although, to my eyes, the most plan9-y way of implementing a home directory would be to have '/home' as your home directory no matter what, and have it default to a bind from /usr/$username.