[tex-k] Re: newer (feature request)

[Olaf Weber]

Reinhard Kotucha writes:

> Hi Olaf,
> I do not know whether John Hobby's "newer" is such a holy cow as Knuth's
> TeX, which never should be changed.

Changing it is an option.

> If not, I would be very happy if the following extension could be
> implemented:

> newer needs exactly two commandline args.

> My idea is that it can get an arbitrary number of args, i.e.
 
> 	newer file_1 file_2 ... file_N

> First of all, it should check whether file_N already exists.  Then it
> should compare the timestamps for each file file_1 ... file_(N-1) with
> that of file_N.

> If the program is used as before (only 2 args), it behaves exactly the
> same.  If more than two args appear on the commandline, it is much
> more conveniant to use:

> In a shell script you could write:

> if newer *.tex file.dvi; then ...

> instead of:

> if newer file_1.tex file.dvi ||
>    newer file_2.tex file.dvi ||
>    newer file_3.tex file.dvi ||
>    newer file_4.tex file.dvi ; then ...

Interesting idea; it does appear to be a useful generalization of the
command.

-- 
Olaf Weber

               (This space left blank for technical reasons.)