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Date:      Thu, 13 Feb 2003 11:37:31 -0500 (EST)
From:      Garrett Wollman <wollman@lcs.mit.edu>
To:        Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
Cc:        arch@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications)
Message-ID:  <200302131637.h1DGbV92036827@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <200302130459.38238.wes@softweyr.com>
References:  <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <p05200f10ba70be419852@[128.113.24.47]> <200302130459.38238.wes@softweyr.com>

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<<On Thu, 13 Feb 2003 04:59:38 +0000, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> said:

> My point exactly.  Garrett's point about all those programs having
> differing syntax in their configuration files completely ignores 
> the fact that all those programs do different things; the differing
> syntax is a feature of the differences of the program.

No, the differing syntax is a consequence of the fact that the
programs were all written by different people, none of whom could be
bothered to create an extensible format and an appropriate set of
reusable library routines to parse it.  These differences in syntax
are completely artificial, and unnecessary.  (I think there's even a
whole chapter about this in /The UNIX-Hater's Handbook/; the people
who wrote that book were mostly coming from the Lisp Machine community
where this is not true.)

-GAWollman


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