Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!rpi!rpi.edu!tale
From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: Re: 14-Sep-1989 patch for C News
Message-ID: <7371@rpi.edu>
Date: 16 Sep 89 19:46:28 GMT
References: <1989Sep14.200112.6029@utzoo.uucp> <224f.2511f7ff@ibmpcug.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@rpi.edu
Reply-To: tale@pawl.rpi.edu
Lines: 45

In article <1989Sep14.200112.6029@utzoo.uucp> Henry Spencer writes:
Patch>*** cnpatch/tmp.file	Thu Sep 14 15:54:41 1989
Patch>--- relay/regress/out/stderr	Wed Sep 13 20:35:17 1989

In <224f.2511f7ff@ibmpcug.co.uk> ronald@ibmpcug.co.uk (Ronald Khoo) writes:
Ron> I got a problem with this one. It seems to want on of these:
Ron> *** cnpatch/tmp.preposterously.long.name.to.make.patch.behave.right
Ron> or it screws up itself and the next patch.

Right.  Actually, when I edited the patch file my tmp.name had a few
more vulgarities in it; I was quite annoyed that the screw-up happened.

Ron> [ for those not 'in the know', evidence of this screwup is the existence
Ron>   of the directory 'cnpatch' after patching ]

Further evdience, depending on your options to patch, are the presence
of .rej files and the various messages patch gives about what file it
is patching, and the following "hunk failed" messages.

Ron> Can someone explain the original patch bogosity anyway? thanks...

From the patch manual page:

man> If no original file is specified on the command line, patch will
man> try to figure out from the leading garbage what the name of the
man> file to edit is.  In the header of a context diff, the filename
man> is found from lines beginning with "***" or "---", with the
man> shortest name of an existing file winning.

I am not sure whether relay/regress/sh/stderr was there before, but
from looking at the contents of the patch it does not appear that it
was.  This would explain why patch made cnpatch/tmp.file.

Patch> (suggested archive name: `pch14Sep89.Z')

Ron> err.. that makes the collating order inconvenient..  It would be
Ron> nice if the shell globbed the patch names in order.  How about
Ron> pch89.09.14 ?

tut uses an algorithm similar to this; patches are named
cnews-YYMMDD.Z in their archives.

Dave
--
 (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet"))