From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system
Subject: Re: Coreutils C question
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 02:04:48 +0000
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"Benjamin S." <niacin89@yahoo.com> writes:
> initialize_main (&argc, &argv);
>
> The definition seems to be:
>
>
> /* Redirection and wildcarding when done by the utility itself.
>    Generally a noop, but used in particular for native VMS. */
> #ifndef initialize_main
> # define initialize_main(ac, av)
> #endif

[...]

> I really don't understand what it's doing. My current understanding is 
> that it's doing nothing. Any help?

Well, it is doing nothing. The comment seems to suggest that it was
supposed to interpret a command-line passed as literal string to the
program in order to set up UNIX(*)-style file descriptor redirection
and expand filename wildcards in the way a UNIX(*) shell would usually
do.