Re: Proposal: remove usr.bin/mkstr

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

    Date:        Sat, 9 Apr 2022 10:10:42 +0200
    From:        Anders Magnusson <ragge%tethuvudet.se@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <1c33051c-45fe-931b-0159-03136c07ed24%tethuvudet.se@localhost>

  | Besides that, mkstr is quite useless on a 32-bit architecture so
  | I would say remove it.

It is no longer really required for anything, or not right now,
but we really are not very far away from exceeding 32 bit limits
for some applications, if that has not already happened.

If we plan on retaining support for 32 bit systems, we might need
all the help we can get sometime not very far into the future, and
this tool just might be sometimes helpful.

But even if not, I'd prefer to keep it.   It isn't as if it is
costing anything that matters - just leave it alone, resist the
temptation to attempt to improve it or turn it into modern code,
and mostly ignore it.   Keeping it shows that we are not ashamed
of our heritage, we came from BSD and still retain some of its
most ancient relics.

I also kind of like having a man page with a Dd line from 1993,
and not just because it wasn't updated when it should have been.

Pity that we don't support pi/px as well.

  | While looking at these programs, you may want to retire xstr as well.
  | It's also a pdp-11 artifact.

It originated from that era ... so did ex/vi ... but was still widely
used with 32 bit systems.  xstr is no longer used (or not much)
because compilers have mostky started duplicating its functionality.

That's just like lint - once used all the time, code was not accepted
if not lint free, now essentially useless as tge compilers have most
of its functionality built in.   If being old and no longer very useful
is the test, then lint should go too.  Perhaps so should I.

kre