[illumos-Developer] sed -i behavior - question

[Volker A. Brandt]

Garrett D'Amore writes:
> On 12/20/10 06:38 PM, Samuel Younge wrote:
> > I believe cross platform compatibility is important. Since sed often ties
> > into the operation of many shell scripts and shell scripts are common to
> > most third party applications, I think following the GNU syntax would ease
> > porting from Linux targets which are ubiquitous . 
>    
> 
> My first inclination is to agree... however this particular syntax is 
> horribly ugly and violates other long-established syntax rules.  
> Therefore, I'd like to have more concrete supporting evidence before I 
> undertake the change.  Conversely, if such a change will create problems 
> for POSIX compliance or other hardship, then I'd like to know (I don't 
> think it will.)

While I also like cross-platform compatibility, and believe that
one should not needlessly deviate from compatibility, I would
prefer a cleaner implementation here.  After all, Illumos is
the equivalent of "core Solaris".  If a distro really needs the
Gnu-like behavior, it can always use Gnu sed in the first place.

As a POSU (plain old sed user), I don't really care -- I will just
specify the correct arguments on the cmd line anyway. :-)


Regards -- Volker
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Volker A. Brandt               Consulting and Support for Oracle Solaris
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