Subject: Re: diremtpy or "exists"?

From: Joey Hess <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 20:43:26 -0400

I think that by generalising beyond dirempty to include exists, you're
getting closer to a generic unix tool.

I worry though that the tool might be test(1). These seem like fairly
good candidates to add to test, especially dirempty.

-- 
see shy jo

---

From: Erich Schubert <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 03:59:51 +0200

Hi,
> good candidates to add to test, especially dirempty.

Definitely test should have had this functionality.
However people will expect test to behave the same on all systems, so
I'm not sure adding some non-POSIX extensions to test is a good idea.
People will write scripts and use test, and then it won't work on other
systems. If it's another utility, then it will be much more obvious that
the tool might not exist on other systems.
Furthermore some shells (busybox?) might be using a built-in test, and
that wouldn't have this functionality then.

best regards,
Erich Schubert
-- 
     erich@(vitavonni.de|debian.org)    --    GPG Key ID: 4B3A135C     (o_
 A man doesn't know what he knows until he knows what he doesn't know. //\
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