> Duncan McEwan writes:
> > > > No.  BSD cat is already broken with -n, -v, -e, -t.
> > > 
> > > though I'd hardly say extra functionality "breaks" a program.
> > 
> > They were probably refering to Rob Pike's "cat -v considered harmful" paper
> > (a reference to Dijkstra's classic "Goto considered Harmful" paper) given
> > at a usenix conference in the early 80's (sorry, don't have an exact
> > reference).
> 
> I find the idea that cat(1) has a half dozen options nearly obscene...
> .pm

	Well I guess there are half a dozen ways to cat a file that can't
be easily done with another command (such as the recently popular tail +0f).
Seems like the number of options shoudn't be an issue rather than whether
those options are functionally present elsewhere.

	on another note, I find the fact that there have been 20+ messages
on 'cat -f' and none on the more interesting and useful (IMO) questions
about ffs and malloc.  But hey, you never know what'll tickle people. 

eric