Why do people screw around with basic command options?

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Thursday 24 August 2006 5:04 pm, Gordon Marx wrote:
> If you're relying on a non-standards-enforced behavior, wouldn't you
> expect to have something like this happen?
I've been involved in this stuff for years. One time, when I was responsible 
for lint on Tru64 Unix, the lint front end script broke because the 
standards had changed the behavior of sed. Our friend Finnbarr set me 
straight on this. In the Linux and Unix world we had 2 conflicting Unix 
standards, SVID and X/Open == now "The Single UNIX? Specification, Version 
3. In some cases the behavior of some of the commands were very different, 
such as PS(1), or CFLOW(1). In our case we have POSIX as well as the LSB. 
And, as Gordon points out, some old scripts reflect the behavior of 
utilities that may not have ever been standardized. I've got scripts going 
back to Ultrix. 

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
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