Subject: bug#12794: Bug in dd: it sends wrong messages to stderr

From: Bob Proulx <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2012 16:57:14 -0700

Ganton wrote:
> > Sorry, but dd is older than POSIX
> Paul Eggert wrote "dd is [...] part of the POSIX standard" and I wrote 
> consequently, if the dd specification is broken, then the POSIX standard is 
> broken, too.

The task of the POSIX standard was to document existing behavior and
standardize it so that there wouldn't be even more differences between
systems.  Of course lately it has become a design-by-committee.  It is
hard for people to resist these temptations.  But standardizing on the
behavior that is already in existence is a good thing because it
allows people to write programs that not only run on their own system
but ones that stand a chance of running on another person's system too.

> > You're 40 years too late on this one.
> This kind of condescending attitudes do not improve matters.

Please no ad-hominem attacks.  Thanks.

I didn't read that as any condescending attitude.  I read it plainly
that the dd command has been around for a long, long time.  It's
option syntax and behavior isn't common with other programs.  It is
unique.  Many commands were we written uniquely back then.  There
wasn't any best-practice to follow.

Now here it is forty years later and the dd command and others have
been doing their job all of this time.  Changing core behaviors such
as this always have consequences.  That is why it is set up as an
option.  If it is desired to be different from the standard then add
the status=none option.

> > No need to report a new bug - we already told you that coreutils 8.20
> > added 'dd status=none' to silence even that information.
>
> "We already told you"? Who is Eric Blake talking to? Nobody talked
> there about coreutils 8.20 or 'dd status=none'. Paul Eggert kindly
> wrote about 'dd status=noxfer'. Eric Blake can re-read the thread if
> he wants to, and if he doesn't want to, at least he can stop talking
> people condescendingly after not really reading the conversations.

Unfortunately Pádraig missed you in the recipient list when replying
to Paul.  See Pádraig response with that item in this message logged
here:

  http://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=12794#13

Generally we CC the original poster but for the rest of us we are all
already subscribed and so we chop off the extra CCs so that we don't
get too many copies.  But unfortunately a (mis)feature of the debbugs
bug tracking software is that it doesn't automatically CC the bug
submitter.  (I don't know if that is set up with debbugs.gnu.org but
generally with the BTS the [email-masked] address
would go to the bug submitter.  So it would be both 12794@ and
12794-submitter@ to get both.)

Bob