[567] in Release_7.7_team
Re: New options for add
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Barker)
Mon Jun 3 14:40:03 1996
From: Mike Barker <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
To: release-team@MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 14:39:52 EDT
Just for clarification.
Proposals:
The Remove Option
1. add -r option to allow user to remove locker from path.
(I assume this would silently succeed if the locker is not in the path?)
There does not seem to be any discussion on the need for this option.
The Move Options
1. add -m option to change the behavior when the locker already is in
the path. effectively this would make "add -m locker" do an "add -r
locker; add locker" and "add -m -f locker" do "add -r locker; add -f
locker".
2. modify the current behavior when the locker already is in the
path. Currently add does nothing if the locker already is in the
path. The proposal is that this behavior be changed, so that "add
locker" will always result in the locker being on the end of the path
and "add -f locker" will always result in the locker being at the
beginning of the path.
Doing this makes the "-m" proposal implicit. It does not provide an
alternative if there is any situation where the current behavior is
the desired one (Not that I can think of a situation where you really
want to leave the existing locker in the middle of the string, but if
there is one, this proposal doesn't provide any way to support it).
3. Make "add -f" move lockers to the front of the path if it's
already there. "add locker" should only work when the locker is not
there, and users should use "add -r locker; add locker" when they want
to move it to the end.
This proposal makes "add -f locker" and "add locker" work differently
when the locker is there. In the "-f" case, it would always move the
locker to the front. In the normal case, though, it would continue to
silently fail to move the locker if it already is in the path.
Effects/desirable changes on other flags/environment variables:
1. -w warning could be expanded to indicate whether the locker
already is in the string (for current behavior add or add -f). it
also could be expanded to indicate when -r tries to remove a locker
that isn't in the string. Frankly, I don't like either of these
possible changes, because they seem to be extra warnings, but they may
be useful.
2. add_flags (environment variable) proposal one allows us to
continue supporting the current behavior and provide the new behavior
of proposal two by putting "-m" in the environment variable.
3. other options (-d, -v, -n, -p, -e, and -a) shouldn't be involved.
