Re: [PATCH] tail -n not supported in all OSs

From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Oct 16, 2007, 22:06 UTC
Message-ID: <20071016220624.GC1314@closure.lan>
In-Reply-To: <1192553837-18302-1-git-send-email-jari.aalto@cante.net>

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 07:57:14PM +0300, Jari Aalto wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> 
> SunOS/Solaris tail(1) does not support option '-n'. The
> following patches change occurrances of:
> 
>    tail -n <N>
> 
> to
> 
>    tail <N>

POSIX.2 guarantees that "tail -n 2" works. "Tail -<N>" is considered obsolete. Unfortunately Solaris requires you to use /usr/xpg4/bin/tail if you want a POSIX.2 compliant header file. The /usr/bin/tail is designed for System V R3 compliance (i.e., from a full two decades ago; SVR3 was released in 1987), and is due to Sun's vow to Backwards Compatible Forever.

See "man 5 standards" on a Solaris box to see how your PATH variable has to be set if you want something which is compatible with modern Unix/Linux common usage.

					- Ted