From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Jul 12 03:12:49 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA08531 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 03:12:49 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp01.primenet.com (daemon@smtp01.primenet.com [206.165.6.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id DAA08291 for ; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 03:12:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from tlambert@usr04.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp01.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id DAA11521; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 03:11:55 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr04.primenet.com(206.165.6.204) via SMTP by smtp01.primenet.com, id smtpd011501; Sun Jul 12 03:11:45 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr04.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id DAA12276; Sun, 12 Jul 1998 03:11:38 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199807121011.DAA12276@usr04.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Improvemnet of ln(1). To: joelh@gnu.org Date: Sun, 12 Jul 1998 10:11:38 +0000 (GMT) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, bakul@torrentnet.com, dchapes@ddm.on.ca, rminnich@Sarnoff.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <199807120821.DAA01163@detlev.UUCP> from "Joel Ray Holveck" at Jul 12, 98 03:21:40 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > >>> How on earth will issuing a diagnostic make it harder to write > >>> scripts? > >> Because now you have to filter out (additional) noise. > > Consider the "improvement" to the dump(8) command about a year ago... > > Regrettably, I don't remember this. Could you please refresh my memory? Someone "fixed" dump to be more consistent in the way it logged events, resulting in scripts that called dump, and even some programs, no longer working. Consider the effect on xgdb of "fixing" gdb's output. > It comes back to my earlier question: Are there going to be more > lossages if we add the warnings, or if we don't? I know for a fact > that I've done the same thing that rminnich described in his original > post. I also know that I've never written a script that this change > would break. > > How many of us have done each? Well, delaying the warning until such time as you try to use the link is not a bad idea -- and it's existing practice. Putting this warning in is in the same class as warning about anything else that implements late-binding of information. If you are going to pre-warn about something which may be perfectly valid, ie: ln -s /b/stuff/newsrc /newsrc cd /b/stuff mkdir newsrc cd !$ cvs co src Then you might as well warn about mismatched braces in C source code when you exit "vi" after editing something which is obviosly C source code because it matches the regular expression .*\.c. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message