Re: Invoking as 'ed - filename' broken in ed-0.3-pre[12]

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Antonio Diaz Diaz <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > In my opinion, GNU patch should be changed to use the standard option
> > `-s'.
>
> This is the first 'ed' implementation I've heard of that does not
> support "ed -" in the traditional sense.  I will fix 'patch' to be
> more portable, but 'patch' is supposed to deal with older 'ed'
> implementations where 'ed -' works but 'ed -s' does not, so it'll be a
> porting hassle.  And in the meantime we have zillions of installations
> of 'patch' out there that will stop working with the new 'ed'.

Be brave and change patch to accept only `-s'. You may discover that 
there are not so many affected systems (and the affected ones are easy 
to fix). ;-) Besides, GNU ed 0.2 has a serious vulnerability discovered 
in 2000 that is fixed in 0.3-pre. So this is a good moment for a change.


> So please revert that change.  POSIX explicitly permits the
> traditional behavior, and I don't see why GNU 'ed' should depart from it.

POSIX permits the use of `-' as a filename, not as an option name, and I 
agree with them. In my opinion, using `-' as an option is not an option. :)

Regards,
Antonio.