7 Apr
2008
7 Apr
'08
11:14 p.m.
Date: Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:04:01 -0400
From: Sridhar Ayengar
That's bull. There are ways to make grep output
something like "No
matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that
perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or
understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand pipes.
If anything, my issue with the evolution of *nix is that the original
philosophy of "write a bunch of simple tools and hook 'em together
via pipes" seems to have been deprecated in the almost 30 years since
I began using Unix. There seems to be a trend of proliferating
options.
Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their
meanings for GNU tar? I can't. Who can understand the tar man
pages? Who knows it to be accurate for the particular incarnation of
tar that they're using?
Cheers,
Chuck
7 Apr
7 Apr
11:20 p.m.
Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches
and their
meanings for GNU tar? I can't.
Neither can I, but then, I don't use GNU tar if I can help it.
Who can understand the tar man pages? Who knows it to
be accurate
for the particular incarnation of tar that they're using?
I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its
manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is
somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of
changes to the code....)
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8 Apr
8 Apr
7:20 a.m.
At 01:20 AM 4/8/2008, der Mouse wrote:
I do. But then, I wrote both the tar implementation I
use and its
manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is
somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of
changes to the code....)
I think you started out trying to prove a point, but you proved another.
Is that what they call an "own goal"?
- John
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7:27 a.m.
On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 7:20 AM, John Foust <jfoust at threedee.com> wrote:
At 01:20 AM 4/8/2008, der Mouse wrote:
The point is that the GNU tools are so crappy, he was forced to write
his own. How does that reflect on the work of Mr. Stallman, a LispM
fanatic? For the brainchild of an old-time Lisp hacker, GNU has sure
become inelegant and disgusting.
John
--
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn
I do. But then, I wrote both the tar
implementation I use and its
manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is
somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round of
changes to the code....)
I think you started out trying to prove a point, but you proved another.
Is that what they call an "own goal"?
- John
8:17 a.m.
I do. But
then, I wrote both the tar implementation I use and its
manpage, so perhaps that's cheating. :) (Actually, the manpage is
somewhat out of date; I doubt I've updated it since the last round
of changes to the code....)
I think you started out trying to prove a point, but
you proved
another. Is that what they call an "own goal"?
Perhaps, if I were trying to take a stance on some issue, which I
didn't think I was - I thought I was offering a data point to indicate
that the situation of users understanding tar was not *quite* as bleak
as it was painted. (I suppose this could be taken as taking a stance
on the presence of users who grok the tars they use, but in that case I
see no grounds for calling it an own goal....)
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
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X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
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5:43 p.m.
On Tuesday 08 April 2008 02:14, Chuck Guzis wrote:
Ack!
Tar was one of the first instances where I found the man pages to be less than
useful, there being a whole lot more available in the "info" stuff on the
system at the time. Way back then (probably not too long after I started
running linux in 1999) I was playing with a tape drive, a bigger unit that
had a proprietary interface card (used a short 50-wire ribbon cable) and of
the assortment of DC-600 and DC-300XL and a number of other tapes the best I
could do with any of them was something like 256MB, which would've meant
spanning tapes to do a backup, even back then. I got to the point where I
could tar a file on to the tape, read it back again, and verify that it was
what it was supposed to be, and then pretty much lost interest at that
point.
And these days I'm wondering how all those data tapes are doing, up there in
the attic, after some of what I've read in here. :-|
--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
-
Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
Date: Mon, 07
Apr 2008 14:04:01 -0400
From: Sridhar Ayengar
That's bull. There are ways to make grep output something like "No
matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it. I suggest that
perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't use or
understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't understand
pipes.
If anything, my issue with the evolution of *nix is that the original
philosophy of "write a bunch of simple tools and hook 'em together
via pipes" seems to have been deprecated in the almost 30 years since
I began using Unix. There seems to be a trend of proliferating
options.
Quick, who can recite from memory all of the switches and their
meanings for GNU tar? I can't. Who can understand the tar man
pages? Who knows it to be accurate for the particular incarnation of
tar that they're using?
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