The Unix Haters' Handbook

[John Floren]

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

Well, programmers are the only ones that matter, right? ;)

John
-- 
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