From: Jason Catena <jason.catena@gmail.com>
To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>
Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 17:13:45 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <d50d7d460910051513j3a4139b4q95fea643c0a9769d@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <200910052204.aa92451@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
> If you really want to fix the problem then the sensible thing
> to do would be to write new versions of many utilities, with new
> names, and then write a shell without globbing. For new scripts
> you would use the new utilities and shell and leave everything
> else as it is. Is it worth the effort? That's a question which
> can only be answered by the person who would be doing the work.
I see the point of having utilities handle no-input without failing
and without error output (other than maybe a status to test the case),
when their output is used as input to other utilities, especially as
embedded commands on the command line. I often use the backtick style
to output into an assignment to *, to separate with $1 etc. Currently
if a program fails, then instead of no output (maybe ok, depending on
the program) it delivers a noisy error message and an exit status.
This style is not the most common use case: most people mean to change
the state of the system when they run a command, and want to see error
messages when a list turns up empty. So I'd welcome commands which
behave the new way, and I wouldn't have a problem calling them by
other names. (My first thought was the suffix 0. You might want to
avoid the prefix g.)
> John Stalker
Jason Catena
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2009-10-05 22:13 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 55+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <<20091005055423.GA14691@nipl.net>
2009-10-05 13:30 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-05 16:13 ` Russ Cox
2009-10-05 19:24 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05 19:31 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-05 21:04 ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 22:13 ` Jason Catena [this message]
2009-10-06 10:10 ` lucio
2009-10-06 2:22 ` ron minnich
2009-10-06 4:37 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-06 4:50 ` ron minnich
2009-10-06 6:40 ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 17:45 ` Brian L. Stuart
2009-10-06 18:00 ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 18:27 ` ron minnich
2009-10-07 8:30 ` John Stalker
2009-10-07 11:05 ` roger peppe
2009-10-06 8:40 ` matt
2009-10-06 16:50 ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 17:15 ` Jason Catena
2009-10-06 17:50 ` Tim Newsham
2009-10-06 19:27 ` John Stalker
2009-10-06 20:10 ` Jason Catena
2009-10-05 21:35 ` Russ Cox
[not found] <<200910071414.aa02318@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-07 13:36 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-07 14:02 ` W B Hacker
[not found] <<200910070930.aa64725@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-07 12:14 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-07 13:14 ` John Stalker
[not found] <<200910060740.aa94573@salmon.maths.tcd.ie>
2009-10-06 12:59 ` erik quanstrom
[not found] <<646955677faa922172207300b93ff6ea@hamnavoe.com>
2009-10-04 18:39 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-03 16:03 Sam Watkins
2009-10-03 17:01 ` Rob Pike
2009-10-03 18:31 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-03 18:56 ` Rob Pike
2009-10-03 19:05 ` blstuart
2009-10-03 19:18 ` hiro
2009-10-03 20:31 ` Steve Simon
2009-10-05 16:08 ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 16:24 ` erik quanstrom
2009-10-05 17:20 ` John Stalker
2009-10-05 19:09 ` roger peppe
2009-10-03 18:46 ` Bakul Shah
2009-10-03 19:11 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-04 4:12 ` lucio
2009-10-04 7:17 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-04 9:18 ` lucio
2009-10-05 6:20 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05 6:53 ` Federico G. Benavento
2009-10-04 10:46 ` Richard Miller
2009-10-06 6:59 ` Uriel
2009-10-06 12:01 ` Jacob Todd
2009-10-04 10:59 ` sqweek
2009-10-05 5:54 ` Sam Watkins
2009-10-05 11:23 ` matt
2009-10-04 10:18 ` Charles Forsyth
2009-10-04 10:26 ` lucio
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