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Date:      Sun, 12 Jul 1998 10:11:38 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>
To:        joelh@gnu.org
Cc:        tlambert@primenet.com, bakul@torrentnet.com, dchapes@ddm.on.ca, rminnich@Sarnoff.COM, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Improvemnet of ln(1).
Message-ID:  <199807121011.DAA12276@usr04.primenet.com>
In-Reply-To: <199807120821.DAA01163@detlev.UUCP> from "Joel Ray Holveck" at Jul 12, 98 03:21:40 am

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> >>> 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.

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