Re: GNU shellery

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Sun, 1 Oct 2017 22:03:10 +0200
    From:        Kamil Rytarowski <n54%gmx.com@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <8ec01cd2-20b8-8c32-5e7f-fd2f8b0448b4%gmx.com@localhost>


  | What are the immediate users of this command? Is something broken? Are
  | we in need of patching something? Does it solve some problem that "tail
  | -r" cannot solve?

Aside from tail needing coypu's new -q option to suppress the file name
noise, clearly not, as the proposed tac is (literallty) "tail -rq"

But we have plenty of other cases where we use the cmd name to affect
behaviour (cu/tip cc/cpp more/less ...) it is convenient to have a different
name for a different operating mode of the command (and tail -r is really
nothing like any other use of tail, it just doesn't really belong).

More importanly, the name is just so "right".

kre

ps: the tac in gnu coreutils is by no means "original" - the tac command
way predates GNU - I forget who created it initially, but the real original
(non GPL'd) version could probably be found if there was a good reason
for that.