Don't most (gnu) commands support the -- notation to signify end of the options and anything after is a file argument, stdin, or whatever? Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile -----Original Message----- From: Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> Sender: tclug-list-bounces at mn-linux.org Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 22:11:27 To: TCLUG Mailing List<tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Reply-To: TCLUG Mailing List <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Subject: Re: [tclug-list] grep help On Fri, 18 Mar 2011, Brian Wall wrote: > On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 11:55 AM, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: > >> FYI, the old "tail +2" is now "tail -n+2" >> >> I don't know why they changed that. > > Last I checked, the tail included in Solaris doesn't even support -n. I > can understand keeping the 'tail +/-2' for compatibilty, but why it > doesn't even support -n is beyond me. Good point. I think Solaris is very, very slow to fix problems with their utilities. I remember finding serious bugs or limitations of Solaris versions of awk, sed and fmt, so I stopped using them, but I'm not sure if they ever fixed them. Adding a -n option makes sense. I thought it made sense for GNU to maintain the +n option, but a file could be named "+2" so the command becomes ambiguous if a file by that name exists. Mike _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota tclug-list at mn-linux.org http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list