On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 8:53 PM, FELLIN, JEFFREY K (JEFF) <[email protected]> wrote: > When I test printf "foo" >bar there is no newline in the file: > $ printf "foo" >bar > $ od -bc bar > 0000000 146 157 157 > f o o > 0000003 > > So if head -1 is suppose to print the first line, there is no end of line, > hence to no line. Given the definition of head prints lines, wouldn't a file > containing no newline chars, not have any output from head?
One counterargument may be that we're talking about the "last line", which may/should be always printed, regardless whether it has a newline or not. The other issue is that I can't find a head(1) implementation which behaves like AST head(1) with Irek's example: On Solaris 10 (/usr/bin/head is the natiev SystemV implementation, not the head(1) from AST) I get this: -- snip -- $ bash -c 'printf "foo" >bar ; /usr/bin/head -1 bar ; printf '\n'' foo $ bash -c 'printf "foo" >bar ; /usr/gnu/bin/head -1 bar ; printf '\n'' foo $ bash -c 'printf "foo" >bar ; /usr/bsd/bin/head -1 bar ; printf '\n'' foo -- snip -- On SuSE/Linux I get this for GNU coreutils and busybox head(1): -- snip -- $ bash -c 'printf "foo" >bar ; /usr/bin/head -1 bar ; printf '\n'' foo $ printf "foo" >bar ; busybox head -1 bar ; printf '\n' foo -- snip -- Erm... this looks pretty much uniform... ;-/ ---- Bye, Roland -- __ . . __ (o.\ \/ /.o) [email protected] \__\/\/__/ MPEG specialist, C&&JAVA&&Sun&&Unix programmer /O /==\ O\ TEL +49 641 3992797 (;O/ \/ \O;) _______________________________________________ ast-developers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.research.att.com/mailman/listinfo/ast-developers
