Differences between version 9 and previous revision of POSIX_ME_HARDER.
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| Newer page: | version 9 | Last edited on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 2:09:02 pm | by JohnMcPherson | Revert |
| Older page: | version 8 | Last edited on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 12:05:03 pm | by AristotlePagaltzis | Revert |
@@ -1,11 +1,14 @@
[POSIX_ME_HARDER] is an alias for the [POSIXLY_CORRECT] an environment variable that can be used for some programs, particularly those written by people exasperated by some aspect of the [POSIX] standards.
-[RMS] quote from [an interview with Federico Biancuzzi | http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html?page=2]:
+RMS quote (from an interview with Linuxcare in 1999, no longer online?):
> To have an excuse to say that we still support the spec, if you define the environment variable, [POSIX_ME_HARDER] was the original way.
> Then a slightly prudish board member convinced me to change it to [POSIXLY_CORRECT] which I now think was a mistake.
> I should have left it as [POSIX_ME_HARDER].
+
+And an [RMS] quote from [an interview with Federico Biancuzzi | http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html?page=2]:
+> Some GNU utilities such as df and du do not follow the POSIX spec unless you set the environment variable POSIXLY_CORRECT. Normally GNU df and du print disk space figures in units of k. POSIX says to print disk space figures in units of 512 bytes. If you set POSIXLY_CORRECT, GNU df and du do that. (My original plan was to name it POSIX_ME_HARDER.) I would guess that very very few users set POSIXLY_CORRECT.
See [Democracy Triumphs in Disk Units|http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=9108281809.AA03552%40mole.gnu.ai.mit.edu].
(To put this message in context, there had recently been a coup that resulted in the demise of the Soviet Union.)
Despite that page suggesting that df(1) uses [POSIX_ME_HARDER], at least recent versions don't. So it's not a very good alias.
