From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <DAGwyn@null.net>
Message-ID: <3B7C2B14.9E4305A0@null.net>
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References: <20010816013325.0875A19B08@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] Oooops...where is ls -R gone?
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:49:26 +0000
Topicbox-Message-UUID: e0c6ed48-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

dmr@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> No, [find(1)] was there, in 6th and 7th editions and thereafter.
> A xenograft from USG, but there, albeit with a BUGS section
> saying "The syntax is painful."

Unfortunately, there has never (to my knowledge) been a really
satisfactory tree walker in any version of UNIX.  Even "xargs",
which one would think would be debugged by now, fails when
there are spaces, ampersands, etc. in leaf names.  I know of
several attempts to provide library or kernel support for tree
walking; the reason none were specified for POSIX <dirent.h>
(which I was the main proponent for) was that none of them had
worked well enough in practice to make a convincing case that
they should be standardized.  I think this is a solvable problem
for which a really good solution would eventually attract users.