On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 11:07:55AM -0700, Cathey, Jim wrote: > >Actually, xargs (the standard one, without -0) accepts a shell-quoted > >list of filenames, so rather than -print0, find could have just been > > Maybe now they do, but when they were first written > they did not. (Or so I understand.) The -print0 solution > was the easy/obvious choice, especially given that the NUL > character couldn't be found in a filename. It required near > zero change to the existing code, and handled all weirdo > filenames with ease.
Are you sure? As far as I know xargs has always behaved this way. It would have been completely incompatible to make this change retroactively if xargs had not originally behaved that way. In particular, non-quoted whitespace (including spaces) is treated by xargs as a delimiter - adding that behavior would have broken everything using xargs if it weren't already behaving that way. Sure -print0 required almost no change in the code for find, but it requires significant change in any program using the output of find. I maintain that shell quoting would have been a much better choice. Rich _______________________________________________ busybox mailing list [email protected] http://lists.busybox.net/mailman/listinfo/busybox
