From: Dave Vandervies Date: 18:38 on 26 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) Somebody claiming to be Robin Stephenson wrote: > Can anyone name a single piece of software that doesn't suck? There must > be some small, perfectly formed jewel out there that does something > useful, right? Right? The system I'm sending this from has a /bin/true that comes close to fitting that description. Not like the one on the other end of the SSH connection. (Linus Torvalds's comment about version and copyright notices comes to mind.)
From: Michael G Schwern Date: 20:42 on 26 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 01:38:13PM -0400, Dave Vandervies wrote: > > Can anyone name a single piece of software that doesn't suck? There must > > be some small, perfectly formed jewel out there that does something > > useful, right? Right? > > The system I'm sending this from has a /bin/true that comes close to > fitting that description. Not like the one on the other end of the SSH > connection. (Linus Torvalds's comment about version and copyright > notices comes to mind.) The Perl implementation of true from the PPT project was a true gem. http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple exit 0;
From: Philip Newton Date: 05:58 on 27 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) On 4/26/05, Dave Vandervies <dj3vande@xxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > The system I'm sending this from has a /bin/true that comes close to > fitting that description. Not like the one on the other end of the SSH > connection. (Linus Torvalds's comment about version and copyright > notices comes to mind.) Which comment is that? --=20 Philip Newton <philip.newton@xxxxx.xxx>
From: Michael G Schwern
Date: 06:10 on 27 Apr 2005
Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging)
On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 06:58:32AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote:
> On 4/26/05, Dave Vandervies <dj3vande@xxxxxx.xxx> wrote:
> > The system I'm sending this from has a /bin/true that comes close to
> > fitting that description. Not like the one on the other end of the SSH
> > connection. (Linus Torvalds's comment about version and copyright
> > notices comes to mind.)
>
> Which comment is that?
I'd imagine it refers to the GNU standard switch madness.
schwern@mungus:~$ /bin/true --version
true (GNU coreutils) 5.2.1
Written by Jim Meyering.
Copyright (C) 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
schwern@mungus:~$ /bin/true --help
Usage: /bin/true [ignored command line arguments]
or: /bin/true OPTION
Exit with a status code indicating success.
These option names may not be abbreviated.
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit
Report bugs to <bug-coreutils@xxx.xxx>.
schwern@mungus:~$
As opposed to BSD true which *gasp* doesn't accept any switches.
You can see this in the tchrist's zen-like implementation of true in PPT.
http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple
As opposed to the "complete" implementation
http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.fancy
From: Dave Vandervies Date: 06:34 on 27 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) Somebody claiming to be Michael G Schwern wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 06:58:32AM +0200, Philip Newton wrote: > > On 4/26/05, Dave Vandervies <dj3vande@xxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > > The system I'm sending this from has a /bin/true that comes close to > > > fitting that description. Not like the one on the other end of the SSH > > > connection. (Linus Torvalds's comment about version and copyright > > > notices comes to mind.) > > > > Which comment is that? > > I'd imagine it refers to the GNU standard switch madness. Yep. As seen at google://linus+torvalds+"bin/true"+quote : % Anybody who really thinks /bin/true should report a version number and a help string (or even a copyright notice) needs to get his head examined. -- Linus Torvalds %
From: Abigail Date: 08:23 on 27 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) --dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 10:10:11PM -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: >=20 > You can see this in the tchrist's zen-like implementation of true in PPT. > http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple >=20 > As opposed to the "complete" implementation > http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.fancy Heh, I was young! Abigail --dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFCbz4CBOh7Ggo6rasRAjC4AJ90S89BAglshpFyhiNMU7f89nZIQgCeOfZX aCwBUigfItHdgIeWxiY7JWo= =UrTW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --dTy3Mrz/UPE2dbVg--
From: Aaron J. Grier Date: 04:56 on 29 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) On Wed, Apr 27, 2005 at 09:23:46AM +0200, Abigail wrote: > On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 10:10:11PM -0700, Michael G Schwern wrote: > > > > You can see this in the tchrist's zen-like implementation of true in PPT. > > http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple > > > > As opposed to the "complete" implementation > > http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.fancy > > > Heh, I was young! it doesn't seem too far off... NetBSD's /usr/bin/true is: #! /bin/sh exit 0 of course which shells these days _don't_ have true as a shell builtin?
From: Jarkko Hietaniemi Date: 05:54 on 29 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) > it doesn't seem too far off... NetBSD's /usr/bin/true is: > > #! /bin/sh > exit 0 Which is of course clever and nicely reusing and all, but /bin/sh tends to clock in at 0.6 to 1.2 MB these days depending on what kind of (k|ba?)sh variant (and CPU) we are talking about. So one megabyte to ... return zero? Hate. > of course which shells these days _don't_ have true as a shell builtin?
From: David Champion Date: 18:45 on 27 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: Subversion (was: Re: Upgrading without central packaging) * On 2005.04.27, in <20050427051010.GA13839@xxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx.xxx>, * "Michael G Schwern" <schwern@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > You can see this in the tchrist's zen-like implementation of true in PPT. > http://ppt.perl.org/commands/true/true.simple When I settled on using bash as a login shell about 9 years ago, I used a lot more of my computer's available resources than I do now and was somewhat focused on eliminating anything that was not necessary. So I put these into my bashrc, where they've been floating since: true () { return 0 } false () { return 255 } yes () { forever echo ${*-yes} } forever () { while "$@"; do :; done } I didn't want to spare the fork() overhead. I think I found myself far too often battling machines with full process tables, or deeply entrenched in swap hell. (I miss those old SCSI disks. You could always tell when one went to swap hell, from across the room. Now you need software to tell you that, and we all know where that leads.) There's a hate. Why can't I reserve some of those core resources for emergency situations, like a minfree on memory? I don't have to worry about full process tables anymore, and that's great, but we still get full memory. I want priority memory, where priority == "I'm telling you it's priority". This is when I learned to hold some open interactive shells in reserve on critical machines, so that if all else failed and I still couldn't fork(), at least I could still exec reboot. The modern-day bad habit consequence of this is that I never log out of machines unless the terminal discipline gets fried and I can't fix it. So I have 103 screen(1) sessions open. Which I used to hate, because maneuvering among more than a few screen sessions is a monstrous PITA, and screen really needs some attention in that area, but now I've got workarounds and who wants to go needling around in screen? What a wretched hive of scum and villainy that is. I also learned to renice -5 $$ all my root login shells as a matter of routine. Hey, when did bash make true and false builtins?
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