Re: [Bug-ed] ed -p flag

[John Cowan]

Antonio Diaz Diaz scripsit:
> John Cowan wrote:
>> Your references merely require that -p take an argument: they do not
>> require the argument to be non-empty.
>
> AFAIK they do not require an empty argument to be accepted. Ed 0.2, for  
> example, didn't accept an empty argument to -p.

To say that Posix doesn't forbid an implementation to print an error
when started with "ed -p ''" is meaningless.  Posix doesn't forbid an
implementation to print an error when started with "ed -p '*'", either,
but an implementation that rejected that would clearly be erroneous.
Implementations should accept any string as an argument to -p, including
the empty string.

The problems with netcat probably reflect either or both of:

1) A failure to fflush() appropriately

2) Using both standard output and standard error

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        address@hidden
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There are
no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that
they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. --The Hobbit