From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
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	<646955677faa922172207300b93ff6ea@hamnavoe.com>
Date: Tue,  6 Oct 2009 08:59:32 +0200
Message-ID: <5d375e920910052359q74f7d070v677ba9fae4d01b02@mail.gmail.com>
From: Uriel <uriel99@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
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Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 8064a81c-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Richard Miller <9fans@hamnavoe.com> wrote:
>> =C2=A0 `--' ends options, forces consistent multi-file mode, allows empt=
y lists
>
> Hey, yeah, great idea. =C2=A0And why not use '---' to force switching to
> Linux compatible mode, and '----' to switch to BSD syntax, and '-----'
> for System V syntax (5 hyphens, System 5, easy to remember). =C2=A0Oh, an=
d we
> might need a way to switch back to Plan 9 syntax. =C2=A0That better be ''
> (0 hyphens).
>
> Example:
>
> =C2=A0cat ---- -s ----- -s '' -v
>
> prints the contents of file named '-v', squeezing multiple empty lines
> (BSD -s) and silencing error message (System V -s).

I'm sure the people in charge of writing the next version of the PoSix
standard will be very happy to adopt your proposal!

That is, if they have not independently 'discovered' this fantastic
solution to this horrible 'problem' already on their own.

Of course, they could also move with the times, and adopt an XML
format for command arguments which would be much more extensible and
Web 2.0 compliant.

That way all commands could share the same dynamically linked parser,
and one could write scripts with their favorite XML-editor!

uriel