bug#78910: tail does not support -r added by POSIX.1-2024

Collin Funk <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.core-utils.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Hi Eric,

Eric Blake <[email protected]> writes:

> Remember, the POSIX synopsis lines lists two distinct invocation
> styles:
>
> tail [-f] [-c number|-n number] [file]
> tail -r [-n number] [file]

Yep, I was going to mention this too. But I was not sure if it should
have a mention in the description to make it more clear.

> which means undefined behavior from the POSIX point of view if -f and
> -r are ever attempted at the same time.  Therefore, whatever GNU
> decides to do on that combo (preferably, diagnose it early with an
> error and exit, since I can't figure out anything else useful it could
> do) will not violate POSIX.

I think it should be standardized to fail when -f and -r are used
together. That seems like the only reasonable behavior to me.

Thanks,
Collin
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.