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Re: stat vs. "-"
From: |
Jim Meyering |
Subject: |
Re: stat vs. "-" |
Date: |
Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:44:53 +0200 |
Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Jim Meyering on 9/15/2009 5:49 AM:
>> But couldn't, because stat didn't accept "-" as meaning standard input.
>> Here's a patch to make it do that (and make the above print what's
>> displayed):
>>
>> This is just FYI.
>> Of course I'll add the usual NEWS, log and tests and post again later.
>
> Any progress on this? It sounded like a nice idea.
Thanks for the reminder. Here's why I've put it off:
stat has two modes of operation: the default is to interpret each
argument as a file on which to call stat or lstat.
Then there's the --file-system (-f) option.
The "-" == stdin approach makes sense for the first case.
Since I couldn't think of a use case for the second,
I was debating to implement it there regardless,
for the sake of consistency. Otherwise, I'd have to
document that it works only *without* -f.
As I write this, however, I'm inclined to be consistent,
even a plausible use case for -f.
Besides, before I encountered the need for "stat -", I might not
have been able to come up with a good use case either.