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Re: Wrong command option in the manual examples

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    Date:        Mon, 23 Sep 2019 16:36:59 +0200
    From:        Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.de>
    Message-ID:  <mvm5zljm644.fsf@suse.de>

  | According to https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi, find -d already
  | appeared in 4.3BSD, and -depth is much newer.

I can believe that, I did not research the history, just what is in
the NetBSD man page (and code).   It looks as if both -d and -depth
appeared in 4.3Reno, with -depth undocumented other than as an implementation
technique for -d (which is kind of a weird way to do it) and much the
same explanation of why -depth is wrong as appears in BSD man pages to
this day...

That kind of suggests that -depth (the no arg version) was older, and
originated elsewhere (none of this is in 4.3Tahoe) but that isn't clear.
If I ever find my BSD sccs files I might (if I still remember this) take
a look and see if there are more clues to the origins.

(-xdev, which was replaced/augmented by -x in 4.3Reno was certainly older).

FreeBSD's -depth N is certainly newer.

None of this affects my opinion that using -depth (any form) in an
example isn't a good choice.

kre

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Re: Wrong command option in the manual examples Robert Elz <kre@munnari.OZ.AU> - 2019-09-24 00:03 +0700

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