Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!swrinde!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!ucbvax!unisoft!greywolf From: greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: POSIX bashing (Was Re: Retaining file permissions) Keywords: chmod, sed, awk... and good old *cat*! Message-ID: <3419@unisoft.UUCP> Date: 6 Mar 91 20:07:25 GMT References: <6039@ptsfa.PacBell.COM> <1991Feb22.041826.201@athena.mit.edu> <1991Feb23.234242.812@am.sublink.org> <1991Feb26.153931.27251@athena.mit.edu> <21789@yunexus.YorkU.CA> <1991Feb28.205734.26484@athena.mit.edu> <21795@yunexus.YorkU.CA> Reply-To: greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf) Organization: Foo Bar and Grill Lines: 49 <21795@yunexus.YorkU.CA> by oz@yunexus.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) & In article jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes: & & > ... one thing I consider broken about POSIX is that there's no & >st_blocks field in its stat structure; more generally, there is no standard & >way in POSIX to find out how much space a file actually occupies on the disk & > ... & & Interesting consideration, though I fail to see why this amounts to POSIX & being broken. I take ``broken'' to mean internally inconsistent, or simply & erroneous, and instead you present your views on something that is not a & part of the standard [along with many other things] and is yet to be shown & indispensible within the its scope. If a strong argument could be made for & such a thing, that would make POSIX incomplete, [which may, as often & happens with other standards, be completed via implementation agreements & or other supplements] but not necessarily broken. Incompleteness, in many ways, is congruent to brokenness. "Well, in the future, we want it to deal with that problem, but for now it doesn't ad- dress it." is synonymous with "Well, it's broken." I think that POSIX is an attempt at an implementation of a bare-bones OS. There are too many things there which are simply done wrong. I agree with Jon on this one. Of course, one could argue that a standard should not try to define too much...but I think POSIX purposely decided to look more like System V and ignore all the interesting bits that made BSD better. Why, I'm not sure. It's truly a pity that System V has more marketing clout; BSD is just SO much more usable. & & Let me ask again: what is it that you know to be broken? & See above. Incompleteness ,', Brokenness. & oz & --- & We only know ... what we know, and | Internet: oz@nexus.yorku.ca & that is very little. -- Dan Rather | UUCP: utzoo/utai!yunexus!oz -- # On the 'Net: Why are more and more fourth-level wizard(-wannabe)s trying # to invoke ninth-level magic instead of taking the time to climb the other # (quite essential) thirteen or fourteen levels so they can do this properly? # ...!{uunet,ucbvax}!unisoft!greywolf