Posted by: Administrator
on December 12, 2003 08:34 PM
That's the funny thing. I already know the things ESR talks of, and most times I agree with him. But what I find odd in Unix is that the most common tasks often are never thought of.
What are the two things 99.99% of people do most often do with tar? THey should be the default actions. "tar [tarfilename] [directory]", and "untar [tarfilename]", not "tar jxf [filename.tar.bz2]", and if 99.99% of the time, patch is used as you put it "patch -i ", then "patch " ought to be the default.
Pipes, and all, are good. But must one use pipes merely to do simple tasks? Must one combine two utilities with a pipe just to do the most common case of using each tool? This stems from a wholly non-admirable tendency (in both Unix and other operating systems), which is that it's easier to develop a library of workarounds and kludges than it is to try to improve things. I like most things about Linux and in general, I have learned to like most things about common unix-like command line tools, but I can't deny their ugliness. A few things are really elegantly designed, but most common utilities contain entirely accidental designs.
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Re:cdrecord sucks.
Posted by: Administrator on December 12, 2003 08:34 PMWhat are the two things 99.99% of people do most often do with tar? THey should be the default actions. "tar [tarfilename] [directory]", and "untar [tarfilename]", not "tar jxf [filename.tar.bz2]", and if 99.99% of the time, patch is used as you put it "patch -i ", then "patch " ought to be the default.
Pipes, and all, are good. But must one use pipes merely to do simple tasks? Must one combine two utilities with a pipe just to do the most common case of using each tool? This stems from a wholly non-admirable tendency (in both Unix and other operating systems), which is that it's easier to develop a library of workarounds and kludges than it is to try to improve things. I like most things about Linux and in general, I have learned to like most things about common unix-like command line tools, but I can't deny their ugliness. A few things are really elegantly designed, but most common utilities contain entirely accidental designs.
WPostma
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