Re: tail "-f" option fails two ways in version 5.93

[Christian Brechbühler]

I read the man page, which indicated I should use

% tail -4f /etc/passwd

and that works fine with tail (coreutils) 5.2.1, and every tail I've
seen before.  I'd say no bug.
However, I recall a discussion here few weeks ago indicating that this
use of options is obsolescent.

Christian


> Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 13:20:48 -0500
> From: Jeff Kinz <address@hidden>
> Subject: tail "-f" option fails two ways in version 5.93
> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
>
> I may have found a bug in tail.
>
> address@hidden src]# ./tail -4 /etc/passwd     #WORKS FINE
> address@hidden src]# ./tail -f /etc/passwd      # WORKS FINE
> address@hidden src]# ./tail -4 -f /etc/passwd
> ./tail: invalid option -- 4
> Try `./tail --help' for more information.
>
> Its possible that I'm missing something here but I am able to produce
> a slightly different bug on version 5.2.1 of tail as well:
> #################################################
> address@hidden root]# tail --version
> tail (coreutils) 5.2.1
[...]
> address@hidden root]# tail -4 -f /etc/passwd
> tail: cannot open `-f' for reading: No such file or directory
> ==> /etc/passwd <==
> colin:x:503:503::/home/colin:/bin/bash
[...]
> The man page says nothing about this and the only thing the info page
> says is that the "-4" type argument must be the first option.
>
> So - is this a bug?