Just look at the GNU coding guidelines, it explicitly mentions that GNU tools are not to use static buffers and silently truncate long lines. Why? Because that's what proprietary Unix implementations were doing at the time! Silent truncation of long input lines! Is that "doing one thing and doing it well" (DOTADIW)? Hell no!

DOTADIW is an ahistorical description of Unix. A humble-brag with little basis in reality.

And also where those guidelines say that silent truncation of long lines should occur?

thanks

>"Avoid arbitrary limits on the length or number of any data structure, including file names, lines, files, and symbols, by allocating all data structures dynamically. In most Unix utilities, “long lines are silently truncated”. This is not acceptable in a GNU utility."

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Semantics

So perhaps DOTADIW is a GNU philosophy, because it's one of the reasons GNU became so popular. Proprietary unix tools often did one thing and did it poorly, making GNU tools a breath of fresh air.

I think you misinterpreted parent’s statement, though, and/or they mistyped. The GNU Coding Standards says to not use static buffers, nor should GNU programs silently truncate long lines.