do we need it all in on utility? yes please! [LWN.net]

do we need it all in on utility? yes please!

Posted Jun 4, 2006 2:55 UTC (Sun) by vonbrand (guest, #4458)
In reply to: do we need it all in on utility? yes please! by coriordan
Parent article: GNU grep's new features (Linux.com)

What happened to the Unix philosophy of small tools that do one thing, and do it well, that can be combined endlessly?

Sure, it is nice to have all this in one package, but on the other hand it is infuriating to see that the "same functionality" (regular expression patterns, processing directories recursively, the list is seemingly endless) are implemented differently in several tools, and what would be handy to combine with other tools sometimes can't be done as it is bound to a specific program.

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purity vs. functionality

Posted Jun 5, 2006 12:49 UTC (Mon) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Sometimes there is a conflict between the goals of design purity, and giving the user what they expect. I don't think either goal is perfect, so decisions or compromises have to be made.

It's worth noting that that the problem with multiple implementations is not as big a problem as "design purity" people sometimes claim it is. Factoring the regex code out into a library and standardising on that (as GNU usually does), greatly reduces problems such as inconsistency.