The Unix Haters' Handbook

[Sridhar Ayengar]

John Floren wrote:
>> That's bull.  There are ways to make grep output something like "No
>>  matches" without breaking a pipeline that uses it.  I suggest that
>> perhaps those who say "They're the kind of thing people who don't
>> use or understand pipes will say." are the ones who truly don't
>> understand pipes.
> 
> No news is good news. Sure, you could make grep blather all over 
> stderr or something, but why? If you don't get any errors, the
> program completed correctly. If you screwed up the syntax or
> specified a nonexistent file, you get an error. However, since GNU
> tools are so utterly goddamn broken, this may or may not be the case
> on any given tool. Try Plan 9 some time and you'll have a lovely
> experience... for example, see 
> http://plan9.bell-labs.com/magic/man2html/1/cat for the proper way to
>  implement cat.

I've played with Plan 9, and it's a definite improvement over UNIX,
especially in areas of consistency, but both seem to be more 
programmer-oriented than user-oriented.

Peace...  Sridhar