Duncan McEwan writes:
> > > No.  BSD cat is already broken with -n, -v, -e, -t.
> > 
> > though I'd hardly say extra functionality "breaks" a program.
> 
> They were probably refering to Rob Pike's "cat -v considered harmful" paper
> (a reference to Dijkstra's classic "Goto considered Harmful" paper) given
> at a usenix conference in the early 80's (sorry, don't have an exact
> reference).

I find the idea that cat(1) has a half dozen options nearly obscene...

.pm