OK, I hear you. The counter-argument could be that the other tools cp, mv, rm, ln, chmod, chgrp, ... have the -v option, and so it's an anomaly that touch does not. And we should strive to avoid anomalies as best we can?
> Also xargs --verbose or (set -x; touch *) are sufficient Those solutions show what we'd *like* to happen, what we're going to try to make happen, but they're much more optimistic than the proposed patch at indicating what actually happened. Michael On Thu, Apr 8, 2021 at 7:23 PM Bernhard Voelker <m...@bernhard-voelker.de> wrote: > On 4/7/21 10:11 PM, Michael Cook wrote: > > Attached, please find a patch to add the --verbose (-v) option to the > touch > > command. > > This was already discussed: > https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/rejected_requests.html#touch > " > touch --verbose. > This could not be implemented robustly. Also xargs --verbose or (set -x; > touch *) are sufficient > " > > Furthermore, the patch makes touch(1) behave differently depending on > whether --verbose > is given or not: 1x vs. 2x fd_reopen(). I think this is the kind of side > effects which > is not acceptable for a simple diagnostic option. > > Or to use Padraig's words from the thread referenced from above's URL: > > https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-coreutils/2012-04/msg00006.html > > Also to indicate as to whether files were created or not, > > is problematic, I don't think that can be done atomically. > > Have a nice day, > Berny >
