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From: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Fixing error messages (was Re: A tirade about inefficient software & systems)
Message-ID: <1QT6_AA@xds13.ferranti.com>
Date: 1 Nov 90 17:10:17 GMT
References: <1990Oct29.232733.2065@sctc.com> <3341@tantalum.UUCP> <RZS6.:A@xds13.ferranti.com> <23@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.ferranti.com (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Xenix Support, FICC
Lines: 24

In article <23@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca> jtc@van-bc.wimsey.bc.ca (J.T. Conklin) writes:
> I think you're on the right track.  But if vendors could be convinced
> to change their error messages, I'd prefer something like this:

>     fprintf(stderr, "%s: Can't open %s: %s\n", progname, strerror(errno));

Be great. Even better have a routine like this:

error_message(short, long)
{
	char *errenv;
	int errlev = DEFAULT_LEVEL;

	if(errenv = getenv("ERROR_LEVEL"))
		errlev = atoi(errenv);

	switch(errlev) {
		...
	}
}

How long has perror been there? 12 years or so? If they haven't even done
that minimal amount of work in the past 12 years why expect them to do
something better. I mean, really!
-- 
Peter da Silva.   `-_-'
+1 713 274 5180.   'U`
peter@ferranti.com