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From: maart@cs.vu.nl (Maarten Litmaath)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Important new program: cleanit.c
Message-ID: <3630@solo5.cs.vu.nl>
Date: 9 Oct 89 20:40:02 GMT
References: <3492@ast.cs.vu.nl> <3498@solo10.cs.vu.nl> <3539@ast.cs.vu.nl> <3554@solo2.cs.vu.nl> <3592@ast.cs.vu.nl>
Organization: V.U. Informatica, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Lines: 38

ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
\...  As I said, it was
\a bug, but either way, it is not varargs.  That has to do with computing
\the address of one paramter from the address of another, and clean() certainly
\does not do that.

Just to set the record straight: I *know* what varargs functions are.  When I
read the original article I almost immediately noticed clean() was called once
with 2 parameters and once with 3.  My first thought was: hey, is it a varargs
function?

\>Anyway, what's wrong with the shell script?
\People keep calling up P-H asking for the sources to spell and write

I don't get it.

\(shell scripts).  Furthermore, I find the shell script somewhat cryptic.

Isn't the spirit of MINIX the spirit of UNIX?  Use small, orthogonal tools to
build complex utilities?  That includes using existing tools instead of
reinventing wheels.

\>"Sometimes it seems Marvin wrote MINIX while Andy was playing Donald Duck's
\>Playground on Suzanne's computer."  (Benno van den Brink)  
\I wouldn't write Marvin off quite so fast.  He's probably smarter than me.
\I certainly didn't come in 2nd in the Amsterdam (or any other) chess
\tournament for kids when I was 9.

I certainly don't write Marvin off!  Besides, wouldn't it be a *compliment*
for him?  After all, MINIX *is* quite an achievement.  But there is still
work to be done.
Job control.  Henry Spencer wrote you didn't object to it *in principle*,
but to the POSIX standard.  Perhaps some other scheme would do.  Is total
conformance to 1003.1 *that* important to you?  I'd rather see an OS with
some job control hooks, than a strictly conforming OS without it.
-- 
The UNIX Way of doing something [...] is to make it look as much like a filter
as possible.  (Richard O'Keefe)        | Maarten Litmaath (mcsun!botter!maart)