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To: Byron Rakitzis <byron@archone.tamu.edu>
Cc: mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu, rc@archone.tamu.edu
Subject: Re: biff? 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 28 Jun 91 15:19:15 CDT."
             <91Jun28.151927cdt.22542@archone.tamu.edu> 
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1991 15:30:20 -0500
From: Mark-Jason Dominus <mjd@saul.cis.upenn.edu>


> fn getsize {			# Get the size of $mail in bytes
> 	size = `{ls -l $mail}
> 	size = $size(4)
> 	if (~ $#size 0)		# No output from ls?
> 		size = 0
> 	$1 = $size
> }

Does this work at all?  On my machine $size(4) is `mjd', because there's
a double space between the permissions and the link count except when
the number of links exceeds 9.

-rw-------  1 mjd             0 Jun 28 16:24 /var/spool/mail/mjd

In fact, it's very difficult to get the size, because it's $size(17),
unless the size exceeds 9 bytes, in which case it's $size(16),  unless
the size exceeds 99 bytes, inwhich case it's $size(15)...

Who was it who said that the $ifs behavior was doing the right thing?