Re: cut 2.0a

Bad News : gnu textutils must be 100% compatible with the past

Good News : I needn't be.

See : http://alexautils.sourceforge.com

Which has this change for cut, plus many other improvements to gnu utils.

adj

At 4:35 PM -0400 5/10/02, Hacksaw wrote:
>  >The cut program could be changed to do things differently.  But then
>>it would not be cut, it would be sed, awk, perl, ruby, etc.  That
>
>Reductio ad absurdum. I am suggesting that cut merely be taught to recognize
>random amounts of whitespace as a delimiter, which would make it a more useful
>utility without changing its other behaviors. That would no more make it an 
>awk than adding a JATO unit to a car would make it a space shuttle.
>
>>   wc -l ~/.alias | awk '{print$1}'
>
>Sure, I'm aware of this, and a couple of solutions in perl. But this is a
>classic case of using a cutting torch to open a can of beans. Also, it adds
>quotes to the command line, which I like to avoid because they often
>complicate things.