From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri May 24 23:41:47 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id XAA13055 for hackers-outgoing; Fri, 24 May 1996 23:41:47 -0700 (PDT) Received: from MindBender.HeadCandy.com (root@[199.238.225.168]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id XAA12885 for ; Fri, 24 May 1996 23:35:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost.HeadCandy.com (michaelv@localhost.HeadCandy.com [127.0.0.1]) by MindBender.HeadCandy.com (8.7.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id XAA07032; Fri, 24 May 1996 23:35:10 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199605250635.XAA07032@MindBender.HeadCandy.com> X-Authentication-Warning: MindBender.HeadCandy.com: Host michaelv@localhost.HeadCandy.com [127.0.0.1] didn't use HELO protocol To: Stephen Fisher cc: Joerg Wunsch , FreeBSD hackers Subject: Re: Adduser program in C In-reply-to: Your message of Fri, 24 May 96 14:31:07 -0600. Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 23:35:09 -0700 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk >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. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@HeadCandy.com --< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >-- NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3, 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. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------