Re: w(1), who(1), last(1) and unix philosophy

[Karel Zak]

On Tue, Jul 03, 2018 at 07:48:04PM +0200, kalle wrote:
> hello.
> with this mail I address e-mail-adresses related to the projects GNU
> coreutils, util-linux and procps.
> 
> it seems to me, that the programs who(1) [belonging to GNU coreutils], w
> (1) [belonging to procps] and maybe also last(1) [belonging to
> util-linux] are giving out similar output.
> Wouldn't it make sense in the spirit of UNIX philosophy to have only one
> specialized command with the different capabilities included ??

Don't forget that UNIX is no one-source stuff. It has long history with
many parallel dialects, implementations and versions. 

Yes, now it's mostly about GNU & Linux and we (the few projects) have
probably enough control to consolidate things, but backward compatibility
is more important in this case.

I guess w(1), last(1) and who(1) will be with us for ever.

Perfect is the enemy of good ;-)

    Karel

-- 
 Karel Zak  <address@hidden>
 http://karelzak.blogspot.com