In-Reply-To: Message from Mark Mielke <mark@mark.mielke.cc> of "Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:29:40 EDT." <488B8934.3050204@mark.mielke.cc> > Users who don't read the document will always be surprised. In > standard Unix, passing a "-" in has traditionally meant STDIN. For input; for output, it's meant stdout, the standard output. Compare % tar cf - | gzip > foo.tar.gz % gunzip < foo.tar.gz | tar xf - As for piping to/fro "-", that's a Perl innovation, but it still means "to/fro the *standard* thing" (of which [per Descartes] the only such standard upon whose existence we can be certain is the very querent it/him/our/themself; hence, the fork, being ourselves of the only entity guaranteed to exist). > One could argue that an experienced user might be "surprised" that "-" > was NOT interpreted as STDIN. This argument is entirely relative to > the person's expectations. > In this case, the expectations should be well instilled. Perl has done > what it has done for over a decade, While what you said is not false, it doesn't convey the historicity. You could have said over a month and been equally correct. Perl has *always* done this. Witness: % perl1 -e 'while(<>) {print "$ARGV $. $_";}' /etc/motd - /etc/motd < /etc/motd /etc/motd 1 This particularly rapid unintelligible patter /etc/motd 2 isn't generally heard and if iTIS it doesn't matter. - 3 This particularly rapid unintelligible patter - 4 isn't generally heard and if iTIS it doesn't matter. /etc/motd 5 This particularly rapid unintelligible patter /etc/motd 6 isn't generally heard and if iTIS it doesn't matter. % perl1 -v $Header: perly.c,v 1.0 87/12/18 15:53:31 root Exp $ Patch level: 0 > and if somebody is truly surprised today - they should pick up the > manual and give it another read. Even in our post-literate uncivilization? :-( --tom