> > I don't know.  See
> > http://mail-index.netbsd.org/current-users/2002/11/03/0011.html and tell
> > me what it means.  (I had to manually type that, so in case it's wrong,
> > the key sentence was "Many of the programs in /rescue lack features of
> > their counterparts in /bin and /sbin (things are left out IN ORDER TO MAKE
> > THEM SMALLER)." (My emphasis).)
 [...]
> I'm often surprised that why so many people misunderstand that the major
> (and the only) benefit of dynamically linked binaries is saving disk

There are reasons to care about size.  I just hope that making /rescue
smaller wasn't used as a rationale to remove features that already fit
nicely into extant (up through 1.6) binaries.  (IMHO, even if you only use
/rescue for emergency situations---especially if you only use it then---it
should behave as closely as possible to the standard commands.
Apparently some aspects of localization are prohibitively difficult to put
in static-linked.  Okay.  But command line editing is present in
static-linked /bin/sh and /bin/ksh already.  It was not historically
prohibitive and so, I hope, is not lost in /rescue.)


  ``I probably don't know what I'm talking about.'' --rauch@math.rice.edu