[BusyBox] [PATCH] macadddr command

[Paul Fox]

 > It's been quite a while since I included ifconfig in my system, but it
 > seems to me that it was quite a pig.  I could see wanting this small
 > utility instead, if ifconfig was not being used for other tasks.

point taken.  if you don't already have ifconfig or ip (i'm
impressed, btw, if so), then adding it just to get the mac
address of the interface probably feels like overkill. 
personally, i'm amazed at the lack of support in /proc for
interface-specific information.  why isn't there a whole tree of
status information under /proc/net/ containing addresses,
netmasks, packet counts, byte counts, etc?  then the tool of
choice would be "cat".

my distaste to a "macaddr" applet goes deep, since it violates
the "use simple tools" approach that makes unix shell programming so
great.  (i think "head" is a wasted command too, btw -- "sed
<n>q" serves just as well.)  ifconfig output is admittedly cumbersome
to deal with -- ip seems better suited, which is nice.

(i've also always thought of busybox as a reimplementation of standard
utilities.  adding new inventions to it begs the question of "where do
we stop?".)

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at brightstareng.com