Hi all, Let me start by saying "Thank you" for the great job you are all doing for the OpenBSD project and community.
I have tried sending this email to www@ but it bounced (reported in a separate email) hence, for a lack of a better place, resending it here. In the FAQ 2.4[0] there's an example of how to get the content of a particular line from a file with the source code: # cat -n pf.c | head -n 3872 | tail -n 1 While, in this instance, it does not fall under the "Useless use of cat"[1] (as the '-n' option provides line numbering) the command construct in unnecessarily long (three commands instead of one). I can understand (I think) that the very reason of it being that "complex" is the fact someone wanted for the line number to be included in the output. This, however, is superfluous, as we explicitly "ask" for the line in question while using 'head | tail' pipe, so the whole thing can be shortened to: # head -n 3872 pf.c | tail -n 1 IMVHO, since the FAQ section is mostly aimed at new, often inexperienced, users it may be a good idea to start them off with a good habit of using the simplest tool for the job, instead of overly complex constructs. One such way would be to use 'sed' instead: # sed -n 3872p pf.c I have included a small patch if you'd care to apply it to said page. [0] http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq2.html#Bugs [1] http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html Best regards, Raf [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type text/x-diff]
