Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 09:30:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Jamie Bowden <jamie@itribe.net> To: Stephen McKay <syssgm@dtir.qld.gov.au> Cc: pechter@lakewood.com, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sysctl variables Message-ID: <199710031327.JAA16422@gatekeeper.itribe.net> In-Reply-To: <199710030736.RAA06730@troll.dtir.qld.gov.au>
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On Fri, 3 Oct 1997, Stephen McKay wrote: > On Thursday, 2nd October 1997, Bill Pechter wrote: > > >> >> So, please, no dual universes. > > >really, > >you could use both commands in the same pipe -- for example (this is a quick > >hack from memory) > > > >att ls | att cut -f1 -d"x" | bsd cat -n > > > >since the AT&T subsystem didn't do cat -n you could get the best of both > >worlds on the fly. Made shell scripting interesting if you didn't > >specify the universe in the command. > > Yes, interesting, yet in practice, I found it a nightmare. The ability > to use these prefixes to change the behaviour of every command meant that > people did that! So, I could write a script using normal commands and have > some bozo invoke it as "att do_the_stuff" and it would fail. So, I had to > be acutely aware of universe issues at all times. It was rarely a help, > and always a possible problem. People were always shoving "att" or "ucb" > into scripts to fix the problems caused by the "ucb" or "att" in the script > further up the call hierarchy. I am so glad to see the back of it! > > Again though, I'm not just a rabid "Not Invented Here" guy. I've tried > a lot of SysV and BSD and hybrid systems and pure BSD beat the others. > I would limit the imports to very carefully selected portions. I'd import > from DOS if there was anything of value there! ;-) > > Stephen. > Why not take the road that Sun (/usr/ucb), and SGI (/usr/bsd) have taken, and make seperate commands for the other? Make a /usr/sysv and throw all the sysv equiv commands in there. Scripts should use explicit command lines when calling tools, so you just use the appropriate, and not worry about user environs/paths screwing things up. Jamie Bowden System Administrator, iTRiBE.net Abusenet: The Misinformation Superhighway
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