From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from knoware.nl ([193.78.121.169]) by hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca with SMTP id <24766>; Sun, 7 Jun 1998 12:12:39 -0400 Received: (from byron@localhost) by knoware.nl (8.8.5/8.7.3) id IAA00500; Fri, 5 Jun 1998 08:59:17 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1998 11:59:17 -0400 From: Byron Rakitzis Message-Id: <199806051559.IAA00500@knoware.nl> To: bengt@dynas.se, noel@jpmorgan.com Subject: Re: problems with an rc script called from cron Cc: rc@hawkwind.utcs.toronto.edu > I had and interesting discussion with Byron about this when he > first released rc. His response was somewhat less than favourable. Well, I am not sure I see any change since then that would make my opinion of "if not" more favorable. First of all, it's just the wrong way to write a conditional. It reminds me more of assembly language programming than any high level language I know! If I remember correctly Duff's paper also describes it as a bug in the language spec. Secondly, rc (my reimplementation) has been around now for 7 years and to break the syntax over a quibble like this seems to me contrary to what we've worked for to this point: a stable, reliable shell. Thirdly, I am not aware of what the state of plan 9 is these days, but I assume from a practical point of view it's at best a curiosity, and no one has ever written to me about the need for interoperating unix and plan 9 rc scripts. So I just don't see any reason to make this change. Byron.