Re: gnu parallel in the bash manual

[Chris Down]

On 16 February 2013 20:54, John Kearney <dethrophes@web.de> wrote:

> Am 16.02.2013 09:50, schrieb Pierre Gaston:
> > I don't quite see the point of having gnu parallel discussed in the
> > bash reference manual.
> > http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#GNU-Parallel
> > I don't argue that it can be a useful tool, but then you might as well
> > discuss sed awk grep make find etc..
> > Or even the ones not part of the standard toolset  since parallel is
> > not installed by default even on the linux distribution I know: flock
> > fdupes recode convmv rsync etc...
> Actually xargs could do everything listed better. and is installed by
> default on most systems.
> > On top of that the examples teach incorrect things eg, "the common
> > idioms that operate on lines read from a file"(sic)
> >
> > for x in $(cat list); do
> >
> > doesn't even read lines!
> this is actually more disturbing.
>
> ls | parallel mv {} destdir
>
> find -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} -P <NumJobs> /bin/mv {} <destdir>
> >
> > I'd say this should be removed.
> >
> Or the examples should at least be fixed. there are terrible practices
> being shown there.
>
>
Count me also in favour of removal of this section. At best the entire
section needs a complete rewrite, but why on earth we have a whole section
dedicated to a nonstandard external tool is kind of baffling.

Chris