Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: File naming conventions

[Jason McCarty]

Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> <angry frustrated Jerry Springer rant response>
> So call the damn option --null-termination. Hell, why are people
> being so pedantic here. If the point is that Tom point blank _refuses_
> to have any such option, firstly I don't believe you, and secondly
> if he did then the reasonable responses might be:
>  - Tom, show us the alternative you've just coded ("tla xargs" etc)
>  - fork tla

See the threads, 'Feature suggestion: "tla inventory -0"'
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2003-12/msg01005.html

"Trying out the new escaping version..."
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2004-03/msg00674.html

"Pipes?"
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gnu-arch-users/2004-03/msg00676.html

or at least Tom's posts to those threads. I get the impression that Tom
would like to institute a new world order in quoting conventions, such
that other tools could understand tla's (actually Pika Scheme's) quoted
names. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, although I do share
in the skepticism that it will happen anytime soon.

One of the problems with xargs appears to be that it unescapes things
given to it (echo "a' 'b" | xargs), but of course it doesn't understand
Pika escaping. An xxargs script should be able to take the place of
xargs for Pika-escaped stuff. E.g. (and this is untested)

xxargs () {
  (while read -r file; do
     tla unescape "$file" | head -c -1 # chop off the trailing newline
     echo -en '\0'
   done
  ) | xargs -0 "$@"
}

-- 
Jason McCarty <address@hidden>