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| In alt.solaris.x86 Stephane CHAZELAS <this.address@is.invalid> wrote:
>I don't follow you. POSIX aims at aiding portability.
Might be true from a data structure and algorithm perspective but clearly
not true from the point of view of a systems administrator. What,
for example, is portable about variable width D.O.M and D.O.W fields?
What about the word "abbreviation" do POSIX re/engineers not understand?
>POSIX doesn't forbid date output to be the same in Russian or US
>english locales. However it clearly defines what the output
>should be in the POSIX or C locale.
Not the problem we are talking about here.
>Without POSIX, how would you want to guarantee anything?
Pure FUD. POSIX doesn't guarantee backwards compatibility, it breaks it.
For a few other examples: why has POSIX "deprecated" the nslookup command,
and sort's -M? Why have they "deprecated" sort flags beginning with "+"?
For another example, where POSIX specifies 'LANG=fr date':
viernes 16 de febrero de 2007 18H21'34" MSK
it could have specified:
Ven Fev 16 18:18:40 MSK 2007
and retained backwards compatibility. Just for starters...
Make no mistake, POSIX is a relatively small group of C programmers with
little or no systems administration experience, making no effort to seek
end-user input on proposed changes. This has always been a problem with
the IEEE. Just this once you would think they could learn something
from the IETF's more successful and inclusive methodology.
Peter
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