echo is something I’ve started to move away from. The systems I use at work only support the -n option sporadically and it’s annoying to discover the times it doesn’t.
I know the suckless folks are working to replace the coreutils, but I gotta say that when I don’t have the coreutils, I really miss them. My world of late has been systems that stop at POSIX.2, which is circa 1995, with very few luxuries beyond that. Bare-bones find and xargs make for rough outings. Colour support in ls is also incredibly useful. And yes, long options make for much easier script reading.
Agreed. I feel like I see a lot of griping about perceived “bloat” in GNU tools, mostly along the lines of “look how many flags it has! Nothing should have that many flags!” While I appreciate elegant minimalism (and use some suckless tools myself), I’ve never really found that to be a compelling argument.
And if you want elegant minimalism, POSIX is a bad starting point. I wouldn’t doubt part of the reason the coreutils are “bloated” is because they want to be POSIX compliant yet offer a reasonably consistent interface.
echois something I’ve started to move away from. The systems I use at work only support the-noption sporadically and it’s annoying to discover the times it doesn’t.I know the suckless folks are working to replace the coreutils, but I gotta say that when I don’t have the coreutils, I really miss them. My world of late has been systems that stop at POSIX.2, which is circa 1995, with very few luxuries beyond that. Bare-bones
findandxargsmake for rough outings. Colour support inlsis also incredibly useful. And yes, long options make for much easier script reading.Agreed. I feel like I see a lot of griping about perceived “bloat” in GNU tools, mostly along the lines of “look how many flags it has! Nothing should have that many flags!” While I appreciate elegant minimalism (and use some suckless tools myself), I’ve never really found that to be a compelling argument.
And if you want elegant minimalism, POSIX is a bad starting point. I wouldn’t doubt part of the reason the coreutils are “bloated” is because they want to be POSIX compliant yet offer a reasonably consistent interface.