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From: ronald@robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386,news.software.b
Subject: Re: C news fast stdio fails regression test on 386/ix.
Message-ID: <1990Aug15.083551.8080@robobar.co.uk>
Date: 15 Aug 90 08:35:51 GMT
References: <1990Aug10.221410.8502@jdyx.UUCP> <1990Aug12.211727.17535@turnkey.tcc.com> <1990Aug14.180838.16019@eci386.uucp>
Organization: Robobar Ltd., Perivale, Middx., ENGLAND.
Lines: 31

In article <1990Aug14.180838.16019@eci386.uucp> clewis@eci386.UUCP (Chris Lewis) writes:

> C-news wants
> to be able to set the real userid

which of course it doesn't actually _need_ to do on most sysV's because
all it wants the real id changed for is to get the ownership of newly
made directories right (ie owned by news) which it _could_ do with
chown() on [ most of ? all of ? ] these systems.

However Henry doesn't seem to like code littered with ugly #ifdefs all
over the place to do things differently for different systems if he can
avoid in in any way at all.  That seems perfectly sensible to me...
it's really the fault of whatever circumstances led to us having so
much divergence in the way our different Unices(*) work.

It's is a completely different philosophy from, say, Larry Wall's
which is to compromise the elegance of his code (and give him MUCH more
maintenance headache) and completely fill (+) his code with #ifdefs to make
sure it "does the natural thing" no matter what operating system you're
using.

There are different compromises either way.  In fact, you lose either way.

Such, as they say, is life.

(*) Unices is a colloquial plural of a certain well-known AT&T Trademark.
(+) OK so I'm exaggerating a little :-)
-- 
Eunet: Ronald.Khoo@robobar.Co.Uk  Phone: +44 81 991 1142  Fax: +44 81 998 8343
Paper: Robobar Ltd. 22 Wadsworth Road, Perivale, Middx., UB6 7JD ENGLAND.