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Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:57:23 -0400
From: "Larry Hall (Cygwin)" <reply-to-list-only-lh AT cygwin DOT com>
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Subject: Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Updated: sed-4.1.5-2
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Joachim Achtzehnter wrote:
> Hi Corinna,
> 
> You wrote:
> 
>> I've updated the version of sed to 4.1.5-2.
>>
>> It reverts the default behaviour of sed back to treating CR/LF as
>> lineendings, in contrast to 4.1.5-1, which only treated the trailing LF
>> as lineending and the preceeding CR as the last character on the line.
> 
> Thank you very much for this fix. It will make life easier for all of us 
> who struggle with a mix of native and Cygwin tools. It is very much 
> appreciated that as far as line endings are concerned the attitude taken 
> by Cygwin developers is not "use POSIX line endings".
> 
> At the risk of provoking another salvo of emotional responses I'd like 
> to express the hope that those who take the opposite attitude with 
> respect to path names ("use POSIX paths") may reconsider their position. 
> I would venture to suggest that a large proportion of serious users of 
> Cygwin must deal with mixed native/Cygwin tools/programs at lest to some 
> extent. Trying to accommodate native standards for things like line 
> endings and path names will obviously make things easier for everybody 
> except those who use Cygwin as a pure POSIX environment that they never 
> leave. Think about it this way:  If you say "use POSIX paths or find 
> something other than Cygwin to do the job" you might as well go one step 
> further: run a POSIX operating system. In other words, you're one the 
> way to undermining the rationale for Cygwin's existence.
> 
> Nobody expects that toleration of native standards which conflict with 
> POSIX in important ways will ever be perfect, it can't be. But this is 
> no reason to tear out what's already there.

Of course, when there are projects that depend on these tools to deliver
POSIX/UNIX semantics as well as those that rely on them for Windows-like
behavior, there's the inevitable group of people that will be inconvenienced
no matter what.  As you say, it's a compromise that will never be perfect
because of these conflicting needs.  But now we're getting dangerously
close to philosophy, which is admittedly not Cygwin-specific.  I'd recommend
that if others want to continue a discussion along the philosophical lines,
take it to the cygwin-talk list, so no one can flame you. ;-)

-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
216 Dalton Rd.                          (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746

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