Unix command line conventions over time

Re:Unix command line conventions over time by debdut on Saturday May 07, 2022 @05:22AM (#31293175)

> --mail=ADDR

> The --email bit is a joke.

what's the context of the joke?

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Re:Unix command line conventions over time by kwijybo on Saturday May 07, 2022 @05:32AM (#31293214)

Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment, also known as Zawinski's Law, states: Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail.

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Re:Unix command line conventions over time by nonrandomstring on Saturday May 07, 2022 @06:16AM (#31293395)

Caught me out!

I assumed it meant to send the output of the command as mail. That's vaguely useful instead of piping to a cmdline MUA. I couldn't believe I'd been missing this for 30 years and so I tried it on few things like

ps aux --mail=me@domain

error: unknown gnu long option

Looked in my inbox. Nothing.

Then I got to the bottom of the page for the punchline.

grrrr

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Re:Unix command line conventions over time by sph on Saturday May 07, 2022 @11:35AM (#31295381)

Also the idea that GNU tools are bloated.

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