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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

Sane defaults still have value.

The old behaviour is the sane default, at least for editing text files. POSIX defines a text file as a file consisting of a number of lines, each terminated by an LF character.

sane is what the user expects, not what POSIX demands.

One could reasonably expect that a user expects a POSIX system to behave according to the POSIX standards?

Not really, most users (even tech people) don't know that it is a POSIX standard, or what's a POSIX standard, or what's POSIX really

Are you thinking about most people who use a computer or most people who use a CLI based editor that's presumably on a remote machine they just sshed into?

I'd say both sets.

Hardly any of my colleagues knows what POSIX is (and surely not in any depth, even those that do), but they still SSH and use editors that include Vim all the time...

I'd say in a company of 50+ SSHing people, around 5-6 know POSIX and its history, and usually the older ones (35+).

I think it's better to expect more from a specialist than less. ;)

A sysadmin maybe. A user hardly.

Especially a 2019 user, 20+ years removed from the systems, decisions, and rationales, behind POSIX.

Just try to get someone (even a seasoned Linux user) to use a POSIX-only userland (as opposed to GNU), as see how fast they'll be pulling their hair out...

I would say it's not just a POSIX demand. Most unix tools are POSIX-complaint, and the user should expect just it and nothing more. Non-proper text files without LF at the end may not be processed properly, so to be assured that everything works fine that LF is mandatory.

Many would say the old behaviour was the sane choice - apart from anything else it's consistent with vi(m) and git.

I suppose. Though you might expect a GNU editor to follow Emacs for this behavior.

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