[gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Ulrich Mueller]

Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
"newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
argument? I don't know how many usage cases there are, but the
following are obvious:

   sed 's/quux/quuux/' foo | newins - foo

It would allow for here documents:

   newins - bar <<-EOF
   # configuration file (for example)
   EOF

or even:

   newins - baz <<<$'# a short\n# file'

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Tiziano Müller]

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Am Montag, den 23.03.2009, 09:22 +0100 schrieb Ulrich Mueller:
> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
> argument? I don't know how many usage cases there are, but the
> following are obvious:
> 
>    sed 's/quux/quuux/' foo | newins - foo
> 
> It would allow for here documents:
> 
>    newins - bar <<-EOF
>    # configuration file (for example)
>    EOF
> 
> or even:
> 
>    newins - baz <<<$'# a short\n# file'
> 

I like it :-)


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Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Nirbheek Chauhan]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of

I wouldn't call it banned, rather "useless" since everyone directly
uses sed instead.


-- 
~Nirbheek Chauhan

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Mon, 23 Mar 2009 09:22:06 +0100
Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
> argument?

There's a slightly different variation in exheres-0: as well as do* and
new*, there's also here*, which you use like this:

    hereins foo <<'END'
stuff
END

It magically barfs, rather than hanging indefinitely, if you forget to
give it some input.

The rationale for giving it a new name rather than overloading an
existing one is that some of the existing do* utilities don't take just
a single simple filename, so overloading would make the command line
somewhat convoluted.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh

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Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:

>> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
>> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
>> argument?

> There's a slightly different variation in exheres-0: as well as do*
> and new*, there's also here*, which you use like this:

>     hereins foo <<'END'
> stuff
> END

Why would we need a new command for this? The minus sign denoting
standard input is fairly common with other utilities.

> It magically barfs, rather than hanging indefinitely, if you forget
> to give it some input.

I guess the same could be done for "newins -", if you think that it is
necessary (test for stdin being a terminal?). But I don't really see
the point of it, since such a mistake would be noticed immediately
when testing the ebuild.

> The rationale for giving it a new name rather than overloading an
> existing one is that some of the existing do* utilities don't take
> just a single simple filename, so overloading would make the command
> line somewhat convoluted.

It doesn't make much sense to specify "-" as an argument for "do*",
because the command would not know under which name the file should be
installed. OTOH, all "new*" commands have exactly two arguments, so we
could allow "-" for the first argument.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Timothy Redaelli]

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On Monday 23 March 2009 09:22:06 Ulrich Mueller wrote:
> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
> argument? I don't know how many usage cases there are, but the
> following are obvious:
>
>    sed 's/quux/quuux/' foo | newins - foo
>
> It would allow for here documents:
>
>    newins - bar <<-EOF
>    # configuration file (for example)
>    EOF
>
> or even:
>
>    newins - baz <<<$'# a short\n# file'

Why can't you use "newins /dev/stdin foo" that it works out of the box?

-- 
Timothy `Drizzt` Redaelli
FreeSBIE Developer, Gentoo Developer, GUFI Staff
There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX.
We don't believe this to be a coincidence.      -- Jeremy S. Anderson

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Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Michael Haubenwallner]

On Mon, 2009-03-23 at 17:11 +0100, Timothy Redaelli wrote:
> On Monday 23 March 2009 09:22:06 Ulrich Mueller wrote:

> >
> >    newins - baz <<<$'# a short\n# file'
> 
> Why can't you use "newins /dev/stdin foo" that it works out of the box?

Nope, /dev/stdin isn't portable.

While Linux and Solaris have it, AIX and HP-UX do not
provide /dev/stdin. Unsure about Interix and MacOSX.

Using '-' sounds familiar for me too.

/haubi/

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Alec Warner]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>
>>> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
>>> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
>>> argument?
>
>> There's a slightly different variation in exheres-0: as well as do*
>> and new*, there's also here*, which you use like this:
>
>>     hereins foo <<'END'
>> stuff
>> END
>
> Why would we need a new command for this? The minus sign denoting
> standard input is fairly common with other utilities.
>
>> It magically barfs, rather than hanging indefinitely, if you forget
>> to give it some input.
>
> I guess the same could be done for "newins -", if you think that it is
> necessary (test for stdin being a terminal?). But I don't really see
> the point of it, since such a mistake would be noticed immediately
> when testing the ebuild.

No, they aren't 'noticed immediately'.  The ebuild hangs and then the
author spends 10 minutes trying to figure out why.  If its trivial to
implement..I don't see a downside to such a feature.

>
>> The rationale for giving it a new name rather than overloading an
>> existing one is that some of the existing do* utilities don't take
>> just a single simple filename, so overloading would make the command
>> line somewhat convoluted.
>
> It doesn't make much sense to specify "-" as an argument for "do*",
> because the command would not know under which name the file should be
> installed. OTOH, all "new*" commands have exactly two arguments, so we
> could allow "-" for the first argument.
>
> Ulrich
>
>

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Ulrich Mueller]

>>>>> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Tiziano Müller wrote:

>> what would people think of "newins" (and the other "new*" commands)
>> accepting "-" as the first argument?

> I like it :-)

Bug 263565 now.

Ulrich

Re: [gentoo-dev] newins "-" for standard input?

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Monday 23 March 2009 13:01:46 Alec Warner wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 8:41 AM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >>>>>> On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Now that "dosed" is going to be banned, what would people think of
> >>> "newins" (and the other "new*" commands) accepting "-" as the first
> >>> argument?
> >>
> >> There's a slightly different variation in exheres-0: as well as do*
> >> and new*, there's also here*, which you use like this:
> >>
> >>     hereins foo <<'END'
> >> stuff
> >> END
> >
> > Why would we need a new command for this? The minus sign denoting
> > standard input is fairly common with other utilities.
> >
> >> It magically barfs, rather than hanging indefinitely, if you forget
> >> to give it some input.
> >
> > I guess the same could be done for "newins -", if you think that it is
> > necessary (test for stdin being a terminal?). But I don't really see
> > the point of it, since such a mistake would be noticed immediately
> > when testing the ebuild.
>
> No, they aren't 'noticed immediately'.  The ebuild hangs and then the
> author spends 10 minutes trying to figure out why.  If its trivial to
> implement..I don't see a downside to such a feature.

this "feature" can be found in any number of existing utilities.  like sed.  
any argument along those lines is pretty weak.  using "-" as a shortcut name 
for stdin sounds logical to me considering it's a standard in the *nix world.

as for the portage utils checking stdin and reporting an error if it's trying 
to grab from the terminal, that's cheese someone can implement if they really 
want it.
-mike

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