From owner-freebsd-arch Thu Feb 13 8:37:34 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D72E837B401 for ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 08:37:33 -0800 (PST) Received: from khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu [18.24.4.193]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E02F43FB1 for ; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 08:37:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu) Received: from khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id h1DGbVbs036830 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168 verify=OK); Thu, 13 Feb 2003 11:37:32 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu) Received: (from wollman@localhost) by khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu (8.12.6/8.12.6/Submit) id h1DGbV92036827; Thu, 13 Feb 2003 11:37:31 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from wollman) Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 11:37:31 -0500 (EST) From: Garrett Wollman Message-Id: <200302131637.h1DGbV92036827@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> To: Wes Peters Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: syslog.conf syntax change (multiple program/host specifications) In-Reply-To: <200302130459.38238.wes@softweyr.com> References: <20030210114930.GB90800@melusine.cuivre.fr.eu.org> <200302121615.h1CGFdGG025691@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu> <200302130459.38238.wes@softweyr.com> Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG < 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 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message