Subject: Re: [PATCH] tail -n not supported in all OSs

From: Theodore Tso <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 18:06:24 -0400

On Tue, Oct 16, 2007 at 07:57:14PM +0300, Jari Aalto wrote:
> 
> SunOS/Solaris tail(1) does not support option '-n'. The
> following patches change occurrances of:
> 
>    tail -n <N>
> 
> to
> 
>    tail <N>

POSIX.2 guarantees that "tail -n 2" works.  "Tail -<N>" is considered
obsolete.  Unfortunately Solaris requires you to use
/usr/xpg4/bin/tail if you want a POSIX.2 compliant header file.  The
/usr/bin/tail is designed for System V R3 compliance (i.e., from a
full two decades ago; SVR3 was released in 1987), and is due to Sun's
vow to Backwards Compatible Forever. 

See "man 5 standards" on a Solaris box to see how your PATH variable
has to be set if you want something which is compatible with modern
Unix/Linux common usage.

					- Ted