Re: [Nmh-workers] [PATCH] scan message numbers from stdin

[Eric Gillespie]

Chris Garrigues <address@hidden> writes:

> I meant to say "-n1" below.
> 
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 12:49 PM, Chris Garrigues wrote:
> 
> > It occurs to me that aside from efficiency issues, that "| xargs -n 
> > scan" currently does the same thing as "|scan -" does with the patch.

No, not even close.  At first I read this as '| xargs'.
That's no good, as the whole point is scan as you go.  '-n1' is
even worse.  I don't need scan to read my entire 50K directory
for every single matched message.  Did you even know it does
that?  And, no, changing that is not easy, nor even
necessarily desirable.

Look, everyone's doing a great job explaining why they don't need
this feature.  Hey, I don't need inc, can I remove it?  No?
I guess not everyone need use every feature of nmh.

Peter Maydell's objections were solid, and I'll be back within a
week or two with a revised patch (I can't work on nmh all the
time :).  If there are other real objections, please raise them.

> >> if the commands are going to take text from stdin
> >> for the purpose of emulating "command line behavior",
> >> then the parsing must indeed emulate SHELL parsing
> >> lest it create a massive violation of
> >>
> >>    The Law of Least Amazement

What the heck kind of requirement is that?  Commands taking input
on the standard input must apply SHELL (csh or sh?) parsing to
the input?  I don't know what to make of this.

-- 
Eric Gillespie <*> address@hidden