[9502] in Athena Bugs
Please fix enscript -p option not to overwrite existing files
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (sethf@Athena.MIT.EDU)
Mon Jun 22 11:02:05 1992
From: sethf@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 11:01:50 -0400
To: bugs@Athena.MIT.EDU, software-suggestions@Athena.MIT.EDU
[This is either a design bug or a suggestion. Rather than disputing the
classification, I've sent this to both].
The "enscript" program has many font and formatting options.
Differenting setting can have a great effect on the number of pages used
and the number of lines wrapped. So in order to find the optimum mix, I
often vary them and look at the results. Rather than killing a forest
in this quest for the perfect printout, I use the -p option (print to
file) and set -p /dev/null. So my command line often looks like
"enscript [many options] -p /dev/null file". After settling on the
desired settings, it's easy to to make an editing mistake and remove the
/dev/null, but not the -p. So the line ends up as
"enscript [many options] -p file", which smashes the file without
warning. This is bad design. It might be argued that the program is
simply behaving as it should, but enscript already makes a check for a
binary file (assuming that's an error), and requires an explicit
override option to print such. So I assert a similar to check for
overwriting an existing file is well within the style of the program,
would be useful, and has precedent behind it.
================
Seth Finkelstein
sethf@athena.mit.edu
