coreutils VS lc

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/commit/fcfba90d0d27a1...

A summary of other changes just released in GNU coreutils 9.5 are:

* mv accepts --exchange to swap files

> some are simple like yes(1)

Not that simple: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c

The -S / --split-string option[1] of /usr/bin/env is a relatively recent addition to GNU Coreutils. It's available starting from GNU Coreutils 8.30[2], released on 2018-07-01.

Beware of portability: it relies on a non-standard behavior from some operating systems. It only works for OS's that treat all the text after the first space as argument(s) to the shebanged executable; rather than just treating the whole string as an executable path (that can happen to contain spaces).

Fortunately this non-standard behavior is more the norm than the exception: it works at least on modern GNU/Linux, BSDs, and macOS.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/env-...

[2] https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/b09dc6306e7affaf...

> building a cat from scratch

> That would be an interesting project.

Here is the source code of the OpenBSD implementation of cat:

> https://github.com/openbsd/src/blob/master/bin/cat/cat.c

and here of the GNU coreutils implementation:

> https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/cat.c

Thus: I don't think building a cat from scratch or creating a tutorial about that topic is particularly hard (even though the HN audience would likely be interested in it). :-)

the yes command, writing to /dev/null, is making IO calls, which interfere with predictable scheduling.

If you look at the source code for yes, https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/yes.c

it builds a buffer of output and then writes that in a for loop

  while (full_write (STDOUT_FILENO, buf, bufused) == bufused)

Looking at the source of nohup, if the execvp() of the child happens then it _must_ have already done the signal (SIGHUP, SIG_IGN) so - WTF?

This got me wondering so I went and looked and it seems like lo and behold there was actually a commit to the GNU ls source just 2 weeks ago.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/ls.c

"maint: prefer char32_t to wchar_t"

even an empty file? Yes. so now it was a file with a copyright disclaimer and nothing else. And the koan-like question comes to mind is "Can you copyright nothing?" well AT&T sure tried.

Then somebody said our programs should be well defined and not depend on a fluke of unix, which at this point was probable a good idea. so it became "exit 0"

Then somebody said we should write our system utilities in C instead of shell so it runs faster. openbsd still has a good example of how this would look.

http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~checkout~/src/usr....

At some point gnu bureaucracy got involved and said all programs must support the '-h' flag. so that got added, then they said all programs must support locale so that got added. now days gnu true is an astonishing 80 lines long.

https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils/blob/master/src/true....

http://trillian.mit.edu/~jc/humor/ATT_Copyright_true.html

> Yes, ls is maintained. Although, maintained is a very strong word. It exists.

Why would it be a strong word? Here it is, in src/ls.c: https://github.com/coreutils/coreutils

It is then packaged by tens of operating system distributions, who themselves maintain extra patchsets, some of which are then upstreamed.

It is installed and used on millions (billions?) of devices, for 3 decades.

It's a very reliable and trusty "sharp stick of metal" :)

This kind of thing should probably be generalized so that any new parameter can be seamlessly woven into your `ls-like` reports.

https://github.com/c-blake/lc/blob/master/extensions/fe1 does `du`, but you could use `ffprobe` to do the run-time in hours:minutes:seconds for media files (or maybe 0sec for non-media) or numerous other things.

I don't know about all your other questions, but the https://github.com/c-blake/cligen CLI framework seems much lower effort / ceremony than even Rust's `argh` and is just about as old as `clap` (both started 8 years ago in 2015).

There are over 50 CLI utilities at https://github.com/c-blake/bu, many of which do something novel rather than just "re-doing ls/find/cat with a twist". While they are really more an "ls/ps construction toolkits" with some default configs to get people going, I think https://github.com/c-blake/lc and https://github.com/c-blake/procs are nicer than Rust alternatives. I mention these since you seem interested in such tools.

https://github.com/c-blake/lc can do that and more; Indeed you can group "dot directories" differently than "non-dot directories". When I sat down to write `lc` I went through all of exas issues and features and included as much as I felt reasonable.

I never liked the graphical tree mode, though. I prefer packing as much information as possible into small real estate (like cell phone terminal screens).