(18-03-2019, 09:23 PM)zge Wrote: Then again, do you really want to spawn a shell and everything it brings with it just to write 0 to a specific place in memory? Try it yourself, if you want to: amusing ./true is an empty file, how much longer does

Code:

time for x in {1..1000}; do ./true; done

need than

Code:

time for x in {1..1000}; do true; done

? On my system GNU's version is ~600 times faster?

Even if that mattered (does it even on a PDP-11?), the GNU version is still the worst version of true you might want to use. The Busybox version behind one of your links is probably (technically) the best version of those, but running a pure Busybox/Linux distribution is an acquired taste as well, and you'd still need a good part of other userland utilities.

(18-03-2019, 09:23 PM)zge Wrote: Regarding at the 80 lines accusation, one just has to accept that the GNU project values consistency (all coreutilities accept a minimum of flags) over strict minimalism.

I both respect and avoid that wherever I can if there are better* alternatives available. Non-minimalist utilities are usually much more error-prone than their sane counterparts. I understand that nobody is perfect, but our new fellow explicitly preferred the UNIX way, so it might be a good idea to not start this journey with neglecting POSIX values.

* I have mentioned in the past that I consider GNU Emacs a rather good programming environment. I still think so.

(18-03-2019, 09:23 PM)zge Wrote: Besides there being a lot to learn, it's not only study, but the ability to actively engage yourself (for personal as well as social sake) and improve or specialise existing tools.

I rarely find existing tools sufficiently lacking, but most of the few tools which I wrote to solve my own problems were written from scratch instead of working around historically grown code weirdnesses. Of course, to each their own. If I ever find myself digging through my environment's source code to hunt for bugs or add any features desperately needed, I might as well replace it by better alternatives.