tail +16c syntax

[Eric Blake]

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There is currently a big debate going on in the gcc-patches mailing list
(for example, http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2005-11/msg00621.html)
about whether "tail +16c" is allowed to have backwards-compatible
behavior, or whether it is a coreutils-5.93 bug that it behaves as "tail
./+16c" when _POSIX2_VERSION=200112.  NEWS documents that "tail -4" is
once again supported, but that "tail +4" is still problematic.  On the
other hand, the meeting minutes from austin at
http://www.opengroup.org/austin/docs/austin_239.html mention that the
intent is to 'add to the OPTIONS "except that '+' may be recognized as an
option delimiter as well as '-'.'  So maybe it is worth patching tail in a
5.94 release to treat "tail +16c" the way the gcc build process claims it
should be.  But I don't want to chime in on the gcc-patches list until we
have some consensus as to what the correct response to their complaints
should be.

- --
Life is short - so eat dessert first!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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