On Tuesday 22 March 2016, Eric Blake wrote: > On 03/22/2016 09:08 AM, Stephane Chazelas wrote: > >> BTW I know about POSIXLY_CORRECT env. I just ask this: Is it worth > >> to violate parts of POSIX just for minor cosmetical reasons? > >> > >> I mean echo -n/-e may be an improvement though non-posix. But > >> echo --version is a violation just for cosmetics, true --version > >> is even worse. > > > > AFAICT, echo --version is a violation, true --version is not. > > 'echo --version' is not a violation. POSIX says that you are allowed > to require the user to set a particular environment variable to enter > the POSIX-conformant setup; in GNU coreutils' case, that variable is > POSIXLY_CORRECT. When set, coreutils' echo behaves exactly as POSIX > requires. When not set, coreutils' echo behaves as GNU Coding > Standards require. As the two standards conflict, we cannot do both > behaviors at once; so the behavior of choice is determined by your > environment variables. > > In the case of 'true' and 'false', the two standards do not conflict, > so we implement both of them at once without the need to resort to > reading POSIXLY_CORRECT from the environment.
You could also let true behave like rm if POSIXLY_CORRECT is not set or if more than zero option given. Does it make sense to change the behavior fundamentally? IMO bash for example does the most natural trade-off. They have -neE but nothing else. cu, Rudi
