From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: Plan 9 annoyances (was: Re: [9fans] mv vs cp) 
From: anothy@cosym.net
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <20011009152322.C57C0199E3@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Date: Tue,  9 Oct 2001 11:23:12 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 0334d476-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

// ...I suspect I prefer the xargs one because my frontal lobes are wired for linear
// tape-processing methods, and the second one requires understanding function
// theory and/or two passes to parse the nested clause.

funny, and i always considered xargs confusing to the way my brain understood
shell stuff: "uh, where's grep's other argument?" i found this especially true in rc,
where the nice {} and clean quoting rules make the "nested" version much easier
to read and understand than in many other shells. xargs seems to invert the flow
of the pipe, reminding me more of the "infix" notation originally proposed for
pipes (see http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/hist.html#pipes) than the
current structure.

rog's point about the buffering of input is a good one, and maybe xargs is just
better there, but it's just never been an issue for me, even before i found Plan 9
and worked exclusivly on Unix machines (and thus had xargs as an option).
-α.