Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 23:35:09 -0700 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@HeadCandy.com> To: Stephen Fisher <lithium@cia-g.com> Cc: Joerg Wunsch <joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de>, FreeBSD hackers <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Adduser program in C Message-ID: <199605250635.XAA07032@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of Fri, 24 May 96 14:31:07 -0600. <Pine.LNX.3.91.960524142734.25292B-100000@gallup.cia-g.com>
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>I would be doing it for the sole purpose of adding a lot of site specific
>things as I did under Linux (finally digged up a skeleton to the adduser
>program and modifying it). I asked about it being in C because I know C
>and not Perl. :(. I would rather just add my things to the current
>adduser program.
I'm not trying to tell you that you're wrong -- it's your system, and
you're certainly welcome to do with it anything you desire.
However, I think you'd be doing yourself a real favor by learning perl
(and awk, sed, sh, grep, cut, etc.). It's The Right Thing To Do.
It's The Unix Way: use small simple tools that are very good at a
specific task, and combine them to make something better.
Perl is one of those tools.
Plus, if you were a real sysadmin (not saying you aren't -- I'm just
saying one who makes a living at it), you'd want to write ALL your
simple site-specific stuff as scripts, if at all possible. This has
two advantages: 1) very quick and easy to modify on the fly [no edit;
compile; test; edit; compile; test...], and 2) very easy for someone
else to maintain if you move on to something else.
With that in mind, you're doing yourself a disservice by locking
yourself into a single paradigm for solving your problems. Look at
this as a great opportunity to learn a new tool. :-)
And, if you think everything I just said is a load of bull, or you're
simply not interested in learning The Unix Way, hack up something in C
and be happy.
By the way, I just finished an excellent book by Peter H. Salus
(published by Adison-Wesley), called "A Quarter Century of UNIX".
Very interesting history of the evolution of Unix.
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Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
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Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
Roll your own Internet access -- Seattle People's Internet cooperative.
If you're in the Seattle area, ask me how.
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