HA! You think there will be only one deadline? You will be revisiting that code periodically, either to fix some bug or implement the Feature Du Jour at your boss's boss's behest.
What do you think costs more time... adding comments now, or trying to figure out what the hell that code is supposed to do later?
what about child pornography?
do we have to protect the rights child pornography makers becauce there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs? Or can we suddenly draw a line?
Thankfully, that's a false analogy. Sexual imagery involving children simply does not blend into other imagery (including adult pornography) in the same way that hate speech blends into political speech and the social discussion. In the instance of child pornography, there is a line that can be safely drawn. It does sometimes become murky, yes, but there aren't nearly so many shades of gray involved.
I was really hoping you were a troll, but it doesn't really look like it from your posting history.
So, here's the deal... you have to protect the right of the crackpots and hatemongers because there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs.
1. Banning propaganda solely intended to cause the breakdown and destruction of a democratic system, and spreading of hate
2. Banning things you disagree with.
The things being banned are the former. Material that is intended to incite people into overthrowing a democratic system.
If people are not permitted to advocate rebellion against a democratic system, exactly how democratic is that system? There is a line, however fine it may be, between democracy and majority totalitarianism. Part of what draws that line is that in a democracy, the minority are allowed to speak and are protected from the majority, however distasteful that may occasionally be.
Where I'm from, one of the primary reasons we protect the right of the minority to speak is so that change can be effected in the government. Advocacy of revolution is permitted because that permission allows it to become part of the national debate, and thereby neutralizes the violent impulse to rebellion while allowing the ideas to change in the government, should they so warrant.
You speak of a fear that a new Hitler might arise, but seem to forget that Hitler came to power in the first place in large part because the majority allowed him to do so. The fact that the majority now wants to institute a ban on hate speech should indicate that their supporting another Hitler is extremely unlikely in a post-1940s European democracy.
The intention may be noble, but it's worth considering that the very existence and popularity of the intention indicates that its primary goal has been achieved. Its secondary goal of stamping out these minority hate groups should be weighed against the implications of the action under consideration... I cannot believe that it is worth the cost.
You'd prefer to be forced to go where Sony wants you to go? If you're really interested in avoiding The Man, Nintendo might be your only option right now. They're not exactly a mom'n'pop themselves, but they sure as hell aren't Sony.
I asked around, and KDE seems to have the same problem.
I can't really comment on GNOME, as I don't use it regularly... but I routinely run KMail, Konsole, and Konqueror across an ssh forward with no problems.
It claims that SuSE is a US company (funny how I could have sworn it was German;o)
Just for the record (I've pointed this out elsewhere), SuSE Inc. is a U.S. company... SuSE has done the general equivalent of incorporating in several countries, including the U.S. SuSE Inc. is, in fact, in Oakland as the article reports.
Of course, it might not be SuSE's U.S. corporation that's involved here, but that's a completely different possible source of inaccuracy.;)
SuSE, Inc. (SuSE's United States corporation) is in fact located in Oakland. Unless it's one of the other SuSE companies in another country that's paying the man, they got it right.
Make your words less bitter... that way when you eat them later it won't suck so much.
If variables really are lists (like you said), then $1foo means "concetenate foo to the last term in the list". How often do you want to do that? I'd bet that $1foo is more often typed by someone who didn't realize $1 could contain a space than by someone who actually wants to treat $1 as a list and concatenate foo to the last term. We just saw an example where $1foo not being a syntax error led to severe data loss. Can you give a reason why bash shouldn't issue an error or warning when it sees $1foo outside of quotes?
No, $1foo means "expand $1 and append foo". You, the intrepid Bourne scripter, should realize that $1 may very well contain IFS characters, recognize what that will mean if the string is retokenized, and quote appropriately.
Look at this:
VARIABLE="$VARIABLE $ELEMENT"
This is a common way of building lists in Bourne. The reason this is common is that it is understood that $VARIABLE will be tokenized when it is expanded, and word splitting on IFS characters will occur. It is also commonly understood that if you do not want a string to be word-split, you quote it so that its IFS characters are ignored. Like I said before, not hard.
I'm sorry, but it takes all of ten seconds to grasp the fact that variables will be expanded and their words split. Occasionally you take it for granted that a list will only have one element, and get away with stuff like $1foo. However, it's not something you do unless you have total control over the contents of $1 (as in, say, a function you've defined that only you will call), and even then it's bad practice.
That's not a justification any more than "Windows crashes because it dereferences dangling pointers" is a justification for Windows crashing.
I couldn't have said it better. The problem there is that someone unfamiliar with basics of pointer manipulation went and dereferenced a null one... the problem is not that the language let him have a null pointer to begin with.
Erf. It does work, and it is intuitive, if you stop thinking of Bourne as a scripting language that can be used interactively and start thinking of it as a shell that can be scripted.
If I call that script like so:
script something else again
I would expect it to remove 'something', which it does, and leave 'else' and 'again' alone, which it does. If I want it to remove all three, I have to do:
script "something else again"
It will then tokenize the string "something else again" and pass it as a set of three parameters to 'rm'. This is a good thing. It allows me to deal with parameter grouping and pass-through efficiently and intuitively. And since this is a shell, that's very helpful. It is truly scripting and not programming. You're feeding the shell a list of commands to run. It just happens to have a few handy programming features like flow control and conditionals.
If you're in a position where you don't just essentially need a bunch of external commands to run in a given sequence, then for God's sake use a programming language like Perl, Python, Tcl, or even Ksh (which is as much a programming language whose interpreter serves as an interactive shell as Bourne is vice versa).
Ah, I see, you live by the "tough man" approach to programming. The fact is, people keep shooting themselves in the foot with this. It's unexpected because it's different from almost any other scripting language. And it's easy to get the same functionality with a different notation. That's why it's a design flaw and that's why the Bell Labs successor to the Bourne shell fixed it.
No, I live by the "hammer for a nail, screwdriver for a screw" approach to programming. It's not unexpected behavior if you don't look at an apple and say "hey, that's just like that orange I've been eating."
Bourne is not, nor is any other derivative shell, very much like any other scripting language that was not based largely upon it. You have only to look at the structure of the [ operator, the way control structures are broken up, and the way variables are expanded to recognize that. It's designed primarily for use on a commandline... the fact that you can write your scripts to a file and run them through the shell non-interactively is bonus.
That said, Bourne is usually the right tool for software installation scripts on a Unix machine. You just have to recognize that you're not wielding a screwdriver.
Also, I do realize it's a common mistake. But so is dropping a semicolon or forgetting to close parens in your C-like language of choice. That doesn't make the need for a semicolon or a close-paren a design flaw.
This is really a problem in how the Bourne shell handles variables.
Okay, there have been multiple posts to this effect, and they're all wrong.
Sorry, but this is not a "problem". The shell operates on lists of words. A variable is assumed to contain a list under most circumstances. List elements (words) are separated by an Internal Field Separater character, defined by $IFS.
Every single one of my Bourne-compatible shells' man pages explicitly state the types of expansion that are employed generally (including word splitting) and provide a short list of exceptions.
This is expected, normal, useful behavior. And it's easily handled, as you can simply wrap any variable in quotes if you don't want it to be tokenized as multiple parameters.
If it's something you can't cope with, that's a shame, but don't act as though it's some flaw in the shell... it's there on purpose, and with good reason.
Really? You actually have laws in your country about where and how you can fly the government's flag? Weird. What would happen if someone flew another flag higher than the US one?
There's probably not much in the way of punishment. Maybe a fine or something. Such laws are primarily for documentation-- so you know how the flags should behave.;)
As a side note, I would wager that whatever nation you're posting from also has laws governing the display of its flag.
Okay, so protopkg is a really useful package-building system. It essentially "wraps" a prototype file (which is a collection of shell functions and declarations) and calls bits of it to help it build the package. You specify compile and install routines, set some magic variables, and protopkg handles the rest. Because of the way it's implemented, it's extremely flexible, and allows you to break all sorts of "rules". It doesn't care how your source is packaged, configured, or built... you specify that. It does, however, do helpful things like compress installed man pages, restore original document timestamps, et cetera.
I had a similar setup in my bedroom at my previous apartment. Long cable running from my PC to a stereo, with speakers mounted high on some shelves.
I was awakened one night by the sound of someone muttering. I got up, stuck my head out my door, and saw that both my roommates had gone to bed. And then I heard it behind me.
Now, walking to your own bedroom's door and then hearing someone behind you is creepy as all hell. So I steeled my nerve, turned around really fast, and... nobody was there. (Huzzah!)
It took a few minutes for it to happen again, but then I noticed it was coming from my speakers. I figured it was probably someone's cordless phone or something, but from then on I turned the volume all the way down or turned off the stereo before I went to bed. I don't need that kind of stress.
Slashdot Mirror
HA! You think there will be only one deadline? You will be revisiting that code periodically, either to fix some bug or implement the Feature Du Jour at your boss's boss's behest.
What do you think costs more time... adding comments now, or trying to figure out what the hell that code is supposed to do later?
bright light: a light that is full of light or illumination.
See my point?
Thankfully, that's a false analogy. Sexual imagery involving children simply does not blend into other imagery (including adult pornography) in the same way that hate speech blends into political speech and the social discussion. In the instance of child pornography, there is a line that can be safely drawn. It does sometimes become murky, yes, but there aren't nearly so many shades of gray involved.
So, here's the deal... you have to protect the right of the crackpots and hatemongers because there's no clean way to protect everyone's rights except theirs.
There's nowhere that you can safely draw a line.
2. Banning things you disagree with.
The things being banned are the former. Material that is intended to incite people into overthrowing a democratic system.
If people are not permitted to advocate rebellion against a democratic system, exactly how democratic is that system? There is a line, however fine it may be, between democracy and majority totalitarianism. Part of what draws that line is that in a democracy, the minority are allowed to speak and are protected from the majority, however distasteful that may occasionally be.
Where I'm from, one of the primary reasons we protect the right of the minority to speak is so that change can be effected in the government. Advocacy of revolution is permitted because that permission allows it to become part of the national debate, and thereby neutralizes the violent impulse to rebellion while allowing the ideas to change in the government, should they so warrant.
You speak of a fear that a new Hitler might arise, but seem to forget that Hitler came to power in the first place in large part because the majority allowed him to do so. The fact that the majority now wants to institute a ban on hate speech should indicate that their supporting another Hitler is extremely unlikely in a post-1940s European democracy.
The intention may be noble, but it's worth considering that the very existence and popularity of the intention indicates that its primary goal has been achieved. Its secondary goal of stamping out these minority hate groups should be weighed against the implications of the action under consideration... I cannot believe that it is worth the cost.
The road to hell...
Present company excluded, of course.
Yes, but not in the Linux kernel. Since it's the Linux kernel we're discussing, that's sort of key, isn't it?
You know, ext3 doesn't prevent your disk from bursting into flame or lapsing into seasonal depression and jumping off a cliff or something.
You'd prefer to be forced to go where Sony wants you to go? If you're really interested in avoiding The Man, Nintendo might be your only option right now. They're not exactly a mom'n'pop themselves, but they sure as hell aren't Sony.
This post, on the other hand (which was linked from the article), is actually relevant.
I can't really comment on GNOME, as I don't use it regularly... but I routinely run KMail, Konsole, and Konqueror across an ssh forward with no problems.
Just for the record (I've pointed this out elsewhere), SuSE Inc. is a U.S. company... SuSE has done the general equivalent of incorporating in several countries, including the U.S. SuSE Inc. is, in fact, in Oakland as the article reports.
Of course, it might not be SuSE's U.S. corporation that's involved here, but that's a completely different possible source of inaccuracy. ;)
Make your words less bitter... that way when you eat them later it won't suck so much.
No, $1foo means "expand $1 and append foo". You, the intrepid Bourne scripter, should realize that $1 may very well contain IFS characters, recognize what that will mean if the string is retokenized, and quote appropriately.
Look at this:
VARIABLE="$VARIABLE $ELEMENT"
This is a common way of building lists in Bourne. The reason this is common is that it is understood that $VARIABLE will be tokenized when it is expanded, and word splitting on IFS characters will occur. It is also commonly understood that if you do not want a string to be word-split, you quote it so that its IFS characters are ignored. Like I said before, not hard.
I'm sorry, but it takes all of ten seconds to grasp the fact that variables will be expanded and their words split. Occasionally you take it for granted that a list will only have one element, and get away with stuff like $1foo. However, it's not something you do unless you have total control over the contents of $1 (as in, say, a function you've defined that only you will call), and even then it's bad practice.
That's not a justification any more than "Windows crashes because it dereferences dangling pointers" is a justification for Windows crashing.
I couldn't have said it better. The problem there is that someone unfamiliar with basics of pointer manipulation went and dereferenced a null one... the problem is not that the language let him have a null pointer to begin with.
Because bash recognizes $1, substitutes it, and concatenates it with 'foo'. How hard is this?
#!/bin/sh
rm $1
doesn't work is nonintuitive and painful.
Erf. It does work, and it is intuitive, if you stop thinking of Bourne as a scripting language that can be used interactively and start thinking of it as a shell that can be scripted.
If I call that script like so:
script something else again
I would expect it to remove 'something', which it does, and leave 'else' and 'again' alone, which it does. If I want it to remove all three, I have to do:
script "something else again"
It will then tokenize the string "something else again" and pass it as a set of three parameters to 'rm'. This is a good thing. It allows me to deal with parameter grouping and pass-through efficiently and intuitively. And since this is a shell, that's very helpful. It is truly scripting and not programming. You're feeding the shell a list of commands to run. It just happens to have a few handy programming features like flow control and conditionals.
If you're in a position where you don't just essentially need a bunch of external commands to run in a given sequence, then for God's sake use a programming language like Perl, Python, Tcl, or even Ksh (which is as much a programming language whose interpreter serves as an interactive shell as Bourne is vice versa).
No, I live by the "hammer for a nail, screwdriver for a screw" approach to programming. It's not unexpected behavior if you don't look at an apple and say "hey, that's just like that orange I've been eating."
Bourne is not, nor is any other derivative shell, very much like any other scripting language that was not based largely upon it. You have only to look at the structure of the [ operator, the way control structures are broken up, and the way variables are expanded to recognize that. It's designed primarily for use on a commandline... the fact that you can write your scripts to a file and run them through the shell non-interactively is bonus.
That said, Bourne is usually the right tool for software installation scripts on a Unix machine. You just have to recognize that you're not wielding a screwdriver.
Also, I do realize it's a common mistake. But so is dropping a semicolon or forgetting to close parens in your C-like language of choice. That doesn't make the need for a semicolon or a close-paren a design flaw.
Okay, there have been multiple posts to this effect, and they're all wrong.
Sorry, but this is not a "problem". The shell operates on lists of words. A variable is assumed to contain a list under most circumstances. List elements (words) are separated by an Internal Field Separater character, defined by $IFS.
Every single one of my Bourne-compatible shells' man pages explicitly state the types of expansion that are employed generally (including word splitting) and provide a short list of exceptions.
This is expected, normal, useful behavior. And it's easily handled, as you can simply wrap any variable in quotes if you don't want it to be tokenized as multiple parameters. If it's something you can't cope with, that's a shame, but don't act as though it's some flaw in the shell... it's there on purpose, and with good reason.
There's probably not much in the way of punishment. Maybe a fine or something. Such laws are primarily for documentation-- so you know how the flags should behave. ;)
As a side note, I would wager that whatever nation you're posting from also has laws governing the display of its flag.
Okay, so protopkg is a really useful package-building system. It essentially "wraps" a prototype file (which is a collection of shell functions and declarations) and calls bits of it to help it build the package. You specify compile and install routines, set some magic variables, and protopkg handles the rest. Because of the way it's implemented, it's extremely flexible, and allows you to break all sorts of "rules". It doesn't care how your source is packaged, configured, or built... you specify that. It does, however, do helpful things like compress installed man pages, restore original document timestamps, et cetera.
I was awakened one night by the sound of someone muttering. I got up, stuck my head out my door, and saw that both my roommates had gone to bed. And then I heard it behind me.
Now, walking to your own bedroom's door and then hearing someone behind you is creepy as all hell. So I steeled my nerve, turned around really fast, and... nobody was there. (Huzzah!)
It took a few minutes for it to happen again, but then I noticed it was coming from my speakers. I figured it was probably someone's cordless phone or something, but from then on I turned the volume all the way down or turned off the stereo before I went to bed. I don't need that kind of stress.
"A little consistency is all I ask."
You know, your title is backwards. If you wrote a book, you would be an author.
That's the way it's supposed to work. If you haven't already, give Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions a read.
I believe the current preference is "Matter-American".