On 23 Oct 1997 20:41:35 +0300, <jari(_dot_)aalto(_at_)poboxes(_dot_)com> wrote:
| but there will always be programs which do something
| sensible without producing standard output which should definitely not
| have an i flag in this situation (the MH rcvstore program comes to
| mind as a good example).
Thank you. Should I check existense of "rcvstore" and then ignore
the "i" suggestion?
No, it is merely an example of a program which doesn't "appear" to
store the data it reads anywhere. Any Perl script could do the same,
or neglect to do it.
It's better to say something from the Lint, that be silent. I
added -i lint directive to suppress the "i" recommendations. then people
who know that i is not needed, must say so explicitely.
Like I said in a different message, I would never actively promote an
i flag other than when the user sees unwanted warnings in the log file
(and even then, how do you know they're unwanted?)
I think the only situation besides truncation where you really want
the i flag is when you execute something merely for its side effects
(e.g. piping to echo, are there other typical cases?) in which case
you'd also most likely have a c flag.
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