Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1998 10:08:20 -0400 (EDT) From: Clark Gaylord <gaylord@gaylord.async.vt.edu> To: jdp@polstra.com (John Polstra) Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: syslogd and syslog.conf Message-ID: <199810151408.KAA22591@gaylord.async.vt.edu> In-Reply-To: <199810121529.IAA29415@austin.polstra.com> from John Polstra at "Oct 12, 98 08:29:49 am"
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> In article <199810121421.HAA22643@cwsys.cwsent.com>, > Cy Schubert - ITSD Open Systems Group <cschuber@uumail.gov.bc.ca> wrote: > > > Having had a chance to think about this, I think that a modification of > > this nature, which would make syslogd somewhat incompatible, e.g. not > > the same as, syslogd's on other UNIX systems, a name change should also > > be considered. In keeping with tradition, this new syslogd should be > > called nsyslogd. > > Yuck! > > BSDI's syslogd can handle spaces in syslog.conf just fine. Ours > should too. > > This isn't a new feature, it's a long-overdue bug fix. I could only agree if we say in very large, bold letters: TABS ARE THE STANDARD, USUAL FORMAT. USE SPACE AT YOUR OWN PERIL. No, more seriously, tab-delimited is the usual means of formatting a text "database" file, and there are potentially non-system routines that will break with this "fix". I don't know that a lot of sysadmins actually try to make sense of syslogd.conf, but in general if you have a fixed number of fields of data that require delimiting, tab and colon are the usual delimiters; using space begs one to use multiple spaces, and then you run into having to consider "[ ]+" or, worse yet " [ ]*", when parsing said file. Again, we could make syslogd able to read space delimited, but I think advising one to use space instead of tab in syslogd.conf would be a mistake. -- Clark K. Gaylord Blacksburg, Virginia USA cgaylord@vt.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message
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