Subject: Re: bug#19456: GNU coreutils - touch / add -v, --verbose option

From: jari <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 09:14:48 +0200

On 2014-12-28 20:35, Jim Meyering wrote:
| On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 12:33 AM, Jari Aalto <[email-masked]> wrote:
| > It would be nice to see progress of touched files. Please
| > add option[1]:
| 
| Hi Jari,
| My preference is to avoid adding the --verbose option
| to programs like touch.  Here is some explanation for
| why I have seriously considered taking the relatively
| drastic step of removing that option from the ch???
| commands that currently accept it (chmod, chown,
| chgrp):
| 
| https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/coreutils/2010-08/msg00042.html
| 
| The case for touch is not quite the same, but the above
| shows where my bias originates.

about ch???:

    I read the above. I personally wouldn't think:

      "All printed information has to be 100% accurate"

    If the manual page documented that due to multiple processes, or
    ownerwhip issue, the output of the commands may not represent
    correctly previous states or even changed stated --- that would be
    enough for me to accept any less than 100 % accuracy in displayed
    messages. Perhaps there are not that too many scripts that actually
    rely on this information.

    For the chmod, chown of course it would be a mistake for a script
    to rely on the output information.

    But removing the option from all? Please don't. Rather discuss the
    prolematics of providing such information in the manual page.

You see, the older we get, the less we want to remember the possibly
cryptic and complex command that could provide the information we'd
like to see.

E.g. for the touch(1) cases where, there were shown alternatives to get
the information; it still wouldn't be as convenient.

I'm lazy, or becoming more lazy as years go by. I'd like the commands
to do the work for me; other people could also benefit from
functionality and not needing to scratch their heads to think ways to
get the infomation in other means.

These:

    touch --verbose
    touch -v

would be so much nicer to use.

Jari