Re: Plan 9 annoyances (was: Re: [9fans] mv vs cp)

[Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.demon.co.uk>]

Hi,

> i've missed find several times. xargs always struck me as
> compensating for poor shell design.

Isn't the problem the argv limits of number of characters and number of
words?

> i still think find would be useful, although a massivly stripped-down
> version from what's in most unixes would be more than enough. about
> 90% of my find usage has been replaced with the fragment `{du -a . |
> awk '{print $2}'} and i think a shell script built around that, ls
> -l, and grep could be all the find i ever need.

Didn't Bell Labs have a stat(1) program on Unix which used to print the
return from stat(2) which could then be used to choose the files using
awk, etc.  This was an improvement on find(1) because you had more
flexibility instead of find's built-in language.


Ralph.