On: Modernizing “less”

[perlgeek]

Another thing they could benefit from: remove aribtrary restrictions. For example, "cut" supports a custom delimiter to cut on with the -d option. But, it can only be a single character.

Why? Because that was easier for the programmer to do.

From a user's perspective, it seems pathetic.

(Yes, I know that there's sed and awk, but why force the user to switch tools so early?)

[judk → perlgeek]

Why not just start with awk or perl and not fight your tools?

Do you wish your screwdriver had a pliers attachment?

Are you familiar with the Unix Philosophy?

[Shish2k → judk]

Last I checked the unix philosophy was "small tools that each do one thing well". You're saying that perl is a good example of that?

IMO making "cut" be better at its one job is more unix-y than using the more complex tools to do conceptually simple things.

[GuiA → judk]

Having multi-character delimiters for `cut` doesn't seem as unreasonable to me as having pliers on a screwdriver.