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From: Luther Johnson <luther@makerlisp.com>
To: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: [TUHS] Re: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell
Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2023 11:05:10 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <8d5a12bf-6eb8-bdc6-932a-ee78ff09a6b6@makerlisp.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230102180020.p6gmiwhrnidfbfsc@illithid>

Point taken, if not entirely understood :)

On 01/02/2023 11:00 AM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2023-01-02T10:48:32-0700, Luther Johnson wrote:
>> Arnold Schoenberg said of his 12-tone method of music composition, "in
>> constraints I find freedom". The best thing about committing to a
>> simple style and a small set of tools that span the problem space, is
>> the effect it has on my program composition, imho.
> Schoenberg didn't have to compose for orchestras such that the Berlin
> Philharmonic string section tuned half of the octave meantone with the
> other half equal-tempered, whereas the Royal Concertgebouw had the
> brasses play an un-notated ascending major third gliss anytime you
> approached the tonic from a tritone _below_ (only).
>
>> On 01/02/2023 10:43 AM, Larry McVoy wrote:
>>> I was supporting a commercial product in the early 2000's and there
>>> were all sorts of systems then that had old shells.  Yes, you could
>>> make everything a 2 level thing where the first level finds the
>>> correct shell, but that's just fuss.  Just make things portable,
>>> it's not that hard and it works everywhere.
>>>
>>> When you get to the commercial world, you'd be stunned to see how
>>> long old machines last.  If they are solving some problem, and they
>>> aren't broken, nobody replaces them.  I'll bet you anything there
>>> are still SCO registers out there, I'll bet there are still PDP-11s
>>> out there.
> The logical consequence of this is to write in Autoconf's recommended
> dialect of shell, which has far too many rules to remember because every
> Unix vendor added exciting new bugs to their "pure" V7 shells.
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.60/html_node/Portable-Shell.html
>
>>> If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
> They were all broken.  Badly.  If your scripts worked, you got lucky at
> Russian Roulette.  No greater claim to robustness can be made.
>
> POSIX shell conformance still proves challenging for vendors, but is an
> immense improvement over the status quo ante.
>
> I agree with Robert Elz though that standardizing the alias feature was
> nuts.  I want to know who brought the crack cocaine to the conference
> table that day.
>
> Regards,
> Branden


  reply	other threads:[~2023-01-02 18:05 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 121+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-12-30 18:25 [TUHS] " Paul Ruizendaal
2022-12-30 19:51 ` [TUHS] " Chet Ramey
2022-12-30 20:02   ` Larry McVoy
2022-12-30 20:31     ` Adam Thornton
2022-12-30 20:49       ` Chet Ramey
2022-12-30 20:42     ` Sven Mascheck
2022-12-30 20:48       ` Jon Steinhart
2022-12-30 20:51         ` Sven Mascheck
2022-12-31 11:40         ` Ralph Corderoy
2022-12-31 18:49           ` Jon Steinhart
2022-12-31 19:24             ` Clem Cole
2023-01-03 16:32               ` Chet Ramey
2023-01-01  1:51             ` Ron Natalie
2023-01-02 20:03       ` [TUHS] Command Line Editing in the Terminal Driver (Was: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell) Joseph Holsten
2023-01-02 20:33         ` [TUHS] Re: Command Line Editing in the Terminal Driver Lars Brinkhoff
2023-01-11  2:51           ` Chris Hanson
2023-01-11  3:53             ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2023-01-02 21:08         ` [TUHS] Re: Command Line Editing in the Terminal Driver (Was: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell) Rob Pike
2023-01-03 16:53         ` Marshall Conover
2023-01-04  9:18           ` Joseph Holsten
2023-01-11  2:56           ` Chris Hanson
2022-12-30 20:47     ` [TUHS] Re: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell Chet Ramey
2022-12-31  0:08     ` Luther Johnson
2022-12-31  3:59       ` Larry McVoy
2022-12-31  4:12         ` Steve Nickolas
2022-12-31  4:18         ` Bakul Shah
2022-12-31  4:40           ` Larry McVoy
2022-12-31  4:19         ` Marc Donner
2022-12-31  4:23         ` Dave Horsfall
2022-12-31  4:37           ` Clem Cole
2023-01-02  5:10           ` Mary Ann Horton
2023-01-02 16:25             ` Clem Cole
2023-01-02 16:51               ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-02 17:32                 ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-02 17:43                   ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-02 17:48                     ` Luther Johnson
2023-01-02 18:00                       ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-02 18:05                         ` Luther Johnson [this message]
2023-01-02 18:12                         ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-02 18:16                           ` Clem Cole
2023-01-02 19:50                             ` Warner Losh
2023-01-02 20:05                               ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-02 19:21                           ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-02 19:34                             ` Rich Salz
2023-01-02 20:12                               ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-02 20:24                               ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-02 20:41                                 ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-02 21:00                                   ` Dan Cross
2023-01-02 21:06                                     ` Clem Cole
2023-01-02 21:19                                       ` Dan Cross
2023-01-02 22:54                                         ` segaloco via TUHS
2023-01-02 23:58                                           ` Jon Steinhart
2023-01-04  9:00                                             ` Joseph Holsten
2023-01-02 22:43                                       ` Steve Nickolas
2023-01-02 21:08                                     ` Joseph Holsten
2023-01-02 21:15                                       ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-02 17:55                     ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-02 18:11                       ` Clem Cole
2023-01-02 18:36                         ` Dan Cross
2023-01-02 18:48                           ` Dan Cross
2023-01-02 18:18                       ` Larry McVoy
2023-01-04  3:20                     ` John Cowan
2023-01-04  3:31                       ` Dan Cross
2023-01-04  4:16                         ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-04 16:15                           ` Dan Cross
2023-01-04 18:28                             ` ron minnich
2023-01-04 19:33                             ` Chet Ramey
2023-01-04 15:21                       ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-01-04 15:54                         ` Ron Natalie
2023-01-02 17:55                 ` Clem Cole
2023-01-03 17:08                   ` Paul Winalski
2023-01-03 19:19                     ` Warner Losh
2023-01-03 19:56                       ` Luther Johnson
2023-01-03 20:21                       ` Dave Horsfall
2023-01-03 21:47                       ` Clem Cole
2023-01-03 21:51                         ` Clem Cole
2022-12-31  4:41         ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2022-12-30 20:20   ` Sven Mascheck
2022-12-30 20:49     ` Ron Natalie
2022-12-30 20:52       ` Rob Pike
2022-12-30 20:53       ` Jon Steinhart
2023-01-01 10:44   ` arnold
2023-01-01 11:28     ` arnold
2023-01-03 16:34       ` Chet Ramey
2023-01-03 15:06     ` Chet Ramey
2022-12-30 19:57 ` segaloco via TUHS
2022-12-31 12:55   ` Paul Ruizendaal
2023-01-01  2:55     ` Warner Losh
2023-01-01  4:38       ` Jonathan Gray
2023-01-01  5:25         ` Warner Losh
2023-01-01  5:35           ` Dan Cross
2023-01-01  5:52             ` G. Branden Robinson
2023-01-01  6:35               ` Warner Losh
2023-01-01  6:35               ` Rob Pike
2023-01-01  6:27             ` Warner Losh
2023-01-01 14:50             ` Ron Natalie
2023-01-01  7:11           ` Jonathan Gray
2023-01-01  7:21             ` Warner Losh
2023-01-01 10:25           ` Paul Ruizendaal
2022-12-31 13:26 Douglas McIlroy
2022-12-31 22:19 ` Rob Pike
2023-01-03 15:08 Douglas McIlroy
2023-01-03 15:57 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-01-03 17:19   ` Jon Steinhart
2023-01-05 13:22     ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2023-01-05 21:11       ` Rob Pike
2023-01-03 17:26 ` Dan Cross
2023-01-03 18:07   ` Steve Nickolas
2023-01-03 20:19     ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2023-01-03 23:03       ` ron minnich
2023-01-04  1:37         ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-04  1:58           ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-04 15:19             ` Ralph Corderoy
2023-01-04 18:01               ` Bakul Shah
2023-01-04 20:46                 ` Alejandro Colomar
2023-01-05  0:06                   ` John Cowan
2023-01-05  0:41                     ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-04  5:05         ` Theodore Ts'o
2023-01-03 18:19   ` Niklas Karlsson
2023-01-04  1:29   ` Adam Thornton
2023-01-05  1:51     ` Alejandro Colomar

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