Hi Damien, Damien Miller <djm@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Thanks, but I don't think we're going to merge this one because I'm > somewhat worried that some systems we currently build on do not support > the -n syntax. Conversely, AFAIK everything* supports -number. Michael Forney said that he was trying to run on a system that did NOT support head -number and tail +number old-style format. This is why I suggested use of 'sed' instead of 'head' and 'tail'. The sed command predates both head and tail and the following idiom in sed should be common going back to at least 1984 when I used sed in this way on the following systems: Berkeley Software Distribution (4.4 BSD-Lite). Mt Xinu 4.3 AIX 3 (1989) - AIX 4 (1994) HP/UX System V (1989) SunOS 3.0Beta1 (1986) thru Soliars 11 FreeBSD 2.2.6 thru FreeBSD/11 OpenBSD 2.7 Cray X/MP I recommend the change from (head -2 .depend; tail +3 .depend | sort) >.depend.tmp to (sed 2q .depend; sed 1,2d .depend | sort) > .depend.tmp should do the job correctly for all instances of sed I have ever used. Failing this solution, coming up with a 'configure' script test might be possible that provides for a compatibility test for using of -n options for head and tail Be safe, stay healthy, -- Mark _______________________________________________ openssh-unix-dev mailing list openssh-unix-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx https://lists.mindrot.org/mailman/listinfo/openssh-unix-dev