Le ven. 17 avr. 2026 à 18:46, Paul Eggert <[email protected]> a écrit : > > On 2026-04-17 06:23, Laurent Lyaudet wrote: > > My patch works, it adds a needed feature > > It's not clear that the feature is all that needed for shell scripts, > given that one can write something like this: > > for file in *; do > lines=$(wc -l <"$file") && > printf '"%s" contains %d lines\n' "$file" $lines > done > > where you can substitute whatever command you like for the printf command. > > If the feature were needed we could indeed add it, but given the > relative lack of need it could well be better to leave wc alone. There > is a nonzero cost to support unnecessary features. > > I write this email in the hope that others can see this approach to the > original problem.
I don't see the point of a solution in 4 lines instead of 1 line, where the intent is not obvious. Both for code compactness and code understanding, my solution is superior. > for file in *; do > lines=$(wc -l <"$file") && > printf '"%s" contains %d lines\n' "$file" $lines > done VS lines=$(wc -ln "$file") Why is free software full of people judging ideas on conservatism and authority argument? If someone well-known brings a half-backed idea is listened to. Why nobody learned the lesson I read in an account on the life of the founder of Perl to language to just "listen to ideas of others with the mindset that it may be good ideas"? I did the code. What's the point of nonzero cost argument? Stop using a computer, everything in it has a nonzero cost.
