Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Minor problems with C news
Message-ID: <1989Jun23.193547.1641@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1989Jun22.061942.1751@twwells.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 89 19:35:47 GMT

In article <1989Jun22.061942.1751@twwells.com> bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells) writes:
>Some Makefiles have some lines like:
>
>	test ! -r file
>
>These, not having a shell metacharacter, get exec'ed instead of sh
>-c'ed. Unfortunately, while test is a builtin, there is no /bin/test
>on my system. So those lines fail.

This is a bug in your system.  Makefile command lines are supposed to be
run AS IF by the shell.  The best fix, probably, is a /bin/test with
functionality matching that of the builtin.

>Another set of bugs is in inews. When grepping for Approved:, it does
>not redirect the output to /dev/null. Moreover, it tries to remove a
>nonexistent temp file immediately after and the rm does not have a -f...

The former is a System V bug; they broke the -s option of grep.  The
latter is indeed our fault.  The official patch just released fixes both.

>In newsrun, the find bad... command prints an error message if there
>have been no bad batches in seven days because it tries to rm the
>`bad' directory...

This is a difference in "find" behavior that we overlooked; the ones we
have don't do that.  Fixed in the patch.

>A gripe: I want to run doexpire when I'm particularly low on disk
>space but I want it to do a different expire than is specified by
>explist; the script mentions explist explicitly...

Arguably a bug; doexpire perhaps should take the file name as an argument.
Just modify it.  (See why all that upper-level control is shell files?)

>Another gripe: I understand using shell scripts all over the place,
>though they really slow some things down...

The only thing we're aware of that is seriously hurt by being a shell file
is inews (which we're reluctant to do in C because so much of it is
potentially subject to change to enforce local policies).  Most everything
else just uses the shell files for outermost-level control, with the real
work all being done in C.  (The batcher, for example, is totally dominated
by the batchmake|compress|uux pipeline, 100% C.)

>but did you *have* to use
>awk? It's awkfully slow! And, I think, unnecessary in many places.
>For example, I use expr instead in my version of spacefor...

Awk is indeed a bit slow.  However, it wins big on flexibility and
portability.  Expr does only 16-bit arithmetic on 16-bit machines, for
example, while awk copes properly.

>And a third gripe: putting tab characters anywhere except at the
>start of a line causes lots of problems with certain editors (like
>mine). These editors have a nasty habit of changing the tabs into
>spaces or of displaying them as ^I, in either case causing
>difficulties.

We do not think it is our responsibility to fix bugs in your editors.
Mid-line tabs are common in C source and shell files everywhere.
-- 
NASA is to spaceflight as the  |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
US government is to freedom.   | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu