Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 14:26:12 -0500 (CDT) From: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org> To: bakul@torrentnet.com Cc: dchapes@ddm.on.ca, rminnich@Sarnoff.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Improvemnet of ln(1). Message-ID: <199807111926.OAA14413@detlev.UUCP> In-Reply-To: <199807111759.NAA20011@chai.torrentnet.com> (message from Bakul Shah on Sat, 11 Jul 1998 13:59:35 -0400) References: <199807111759.NAA20011@chai.torrentnet.com>
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>> How on earth will issuing a diagnostic break scripts? > Consider a script that uses output of another script. A > typical shell script that just does its job normally does not > chatter away on stderr. Most scripts that I have seen that rely on output use stdout, not stderr. > If dmr & ken had wanted warnings they would have added stdwarn > [warning: that is a joke] :-) >> How on earth will issuing a diagnostic make it harder to write >> scripts? > Because now you have to filter out (additional) noise. So, we've now got a script that relies on the stderr of another script, the latter of which makes symlinks to non-existant files, and the former of which will break if a line is added. Have I got you right? I will personally buy a beer (so long as it's not an American beer) for the first five people who can show me current existance of such a script. (In other words, a script written during or after this discussion doesn't count.) That said, I sincerely doubt I'll have to buy a single beer. >> I'm *not* talking about a prompt a la cp -i. I'm *not* talking about >> a failure a la trying to symlink over an existing file. I'm talking >> about a diagnostic. > Understood. I am just pointing out that *any* deviation from > existing practice can break things. If you want every utility and library call to behave the same forever, then stay at the same OS revision forever. If you don't want change... don't change. I realize that it is possibly feasable for such a script to exist. I also believe that it is practically unreasonable, and arguably (though I won't argue it in this thread, and hope that none of you do) deserves to lose. Happy hacking, joelh -- Joel Ray Holveck - joelh@gnu.org - http://www.wp.com/piquan Fourth law of programming: Anything that can go wrong wi sendmail: segmentation violation - core dumped To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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