On Sat, 5 Mar 2011, Jason McIntyre wrote: > > > fixed, thanks. but i'm confused - if originally -g requested group info > > > "be included", why did the man page say (of group info) "though not for > > > -g"? should that passage read "excluded" instead? anyone know? > > > > Sorry -- after checking the commit logs it apparently got introduced > > right after -g was made POSIX-compliant (r1.49). It's neither correct > > for traditional BSD nor POSIX behaviour. > > > > so, can anyone clarify what -g orignally did, and whether the wording is > ok?
Original? For 32V and 3BSD (1979/80): ``Give group ID instead of owner ID in long listing.'' For 4.1cBSD / 4.2BSD (1982/83), it changed to ``Include the group ownership of the file in a long output.'' (So display user and group.) Then displaying group (with user) also became the default in 4.4BSD and -g then was ignored for compatibility (in March 1993). OpenBSD 4.2 (May 2007) changed it so -g would not show the owner -- so back to 3BSD -g behaviour which matches POSIX.
