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From:	culliton@srg.af.mil (Tom Culliton x2278)
X-Mailer: SCO System V Mail (version 3.2)
To:	alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu
Subject: Re: wishlist
Cc:	rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu
Date:	Wed, 26 May 1993 13:49:25 -0400
Message-Id: <9305261349.aa04090@ceres.srg.af.mil>

> You can't use sed, as you don't know how much it buffers stuff up internally.
> Same with awk.
> 
> You cannot use ifs = $nl { foo = `{ cat } }, as you lose blank lines
> and cannot tell if the final line ends in a $nl or not.  I had enough
> of that kind of stuff 

You're absolutely right.  My first draft actually started out saying
that sed wouldn't work for pipes because you couldn't rescan the input
and provided an external command called "lines" (a generalization of
"line").  Unfortunately when I came back from lunch the reason for this
had slipped my mind, so it got cut.  (How embarassing!)  All the more
reason to add read.

Tom