Subject: Re: CVS commit: src
To: matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
List: source-changes
Date: 02/09/1999 13:55:42
[I think comments on commits are supposed to go to tech-whatever.  But
since Matt started here, I'm not going to move there.]

> well, for many cases, i *expect* a binary to change depending on
> it's called named, eg, grep.  if i renamed it egrep, i'd expect it
> to work as egrep.  but now that is broken.

I'd just like to say that I think this is a ridiculous user
expectation.  To take a binary named foo, rename it to bar, and expect
it to act as bar seems the height of taking advantage of accidental
implementation behavior.  (Except in cases where it's documented, like
rlogin, although I think of that as an irritating historical mistake.)

On the flip side, the original commit message said:

> egrep, fgrep were links This is in violation of GNU standards:

This seems like a very strange justification for a commit.  We don't
usually make a point of adhering to GNU standards.