[Toybox] [PATCH] ls.c: match coreutils exit status.

Rob Landley rob at landley.net
Sun Nov 3 23:44:56 PST 2019


On 11/3/19 11:18 PM, enh wrote:
>> It's an increase (2 new lines and a macro) in code complexity rather than an
>> equivalent substitution, and it's the half-dozenth return to this topic so far
>> over an 8 month period, and I'd like to be able to enunciate what we're trying
>> to accomplish here and put it in design.html or something.
> 
> for me personally "existing scripts in the wild are making use of the
> distinctions [as with timeout(1) or xargs(1)]" is 100% legit. and
> "we've only seen this on the man page and can't imagine a use for it"
> is the opposite end of the spectrum.

We're on the same page there.

> this one is particularly weird because on the one hand "helps testing"
> is good, but on the other hand, the fact that "the reference
> implementation is ridiculous" is bad. (a) because the difference
> between "minor" and "serious" seems completely arbitrary and (b)
> because i'm really struggling to imagine a situation where it would
> actually be useful.

Yeah, I was having that problem too.

> (well, i can probably guess that this was for
> autotools, so they could recognize a GNU ls? but until we hit that
> case in practice...)

https://git.busybox.net/busybox/commit/?id=c06f568ddaaa

I will go amazingly ugly to make the real world work. I'm just averse to
infrastructure in search of a user and like systematic solutions where feasible...

Rob


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