On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Nick Guenther wrote: > Why does cat retain the -[etv], -[bn] and -[s] options? I am reading > the paper cited in cat's manpage and saw 'vis' mentioned. vis is in > base, and line numbering and stripping can be done with sed, so why > does cat have those options? Is for history, just for compatibility, > or has no one ever bothered to remove them (I find this unlikely)?
Once you've added a flag to a command it's almost impossible to remove it
for compatibility reasons.
-Otto
