Doug McIlroy on Unix Taste (2014)

Re:Doug McIlroy on Unix Taste (2014) by rwmj on Friday June 10, 2016 @03:56AM (#11874890)

Is it affecting you adversely in some way? Almost all the time you can write:

    something or other | less

and it does what you expect. The additional features and customization are there if you need them, and hide out of the way when you don't.

If he really wants a pager with fewer features, then plenty of others exist, like plain "more":

    $ more |& wc
         20      94     676

But people don't do that. They use less because it's better.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Doug McIlroy on Unix Taste (2014) by int0x80 on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:45AM (#11875083)

When you do `smthin | less' the other bazilion options are loaded in less, using resources. If you want to have a quick look a the help you can get overwhelmed by all the information.

Having so many options in less can be seen as over-engineering. Bloating the system. There are duplicate features, features that probably don't belong in less etc. It goes against the minimalism of Unix.

It probably isn't a big deal in this case, but as a general rule being simple and lean is a feature IMO.

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Re:Doug McIlroy on Unix Taste (2014) by GFK_of_xmaspast on Friday June 10, 2016 @08:31AM (#11875880)

> the other bazilion options are loaded in less, using resources

What kind of tiny little system are you using that you have to worry about less taking up too much of it?

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