> >Description:
> 	uname -a produces the output you see above, which is nigh unparsable.

Last i looked, POSIX allows this behaviour, saying "the format and
content" of the individual strings for each of the flags are
implementation defined, and does not prohibit spaces in them (though
does prohibit newlines, apparently).

The rat of the POSIX draft that i have says:

>Note that any of the symbols could include embedded <space>s, which may
>affect parsing algorithms if multiple options are selected for output.

So, in a nutshell, you should not be using -a if you want the
individual 'components'.


> >Fix: I don't think '-v' should be implied by '-a'.  I would expect
> -a to produce something more like `uname -mnrs`, because otherwise,
> I don't know there's a sane way to extract useful information from
> it.

POSIX requires that -a output as if -m, -n, -r, -s, and -v had all
been specified.


cgd