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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Question on getopt()
Message-ID: <5733@sun.uucp>
Date: Fri, 1-Aug-86 14:29:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.5733
Posted: Fri Aug  1 14:29:57 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 2-Aug-86 10:44:27 EDT
References: <7009@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 24

> >Read the code, not the manual page!
> 
> This may come as a great surprise to you, but some of us don't HAVE source
> code :-(

This may come as a great surprise to you, but I'm at least as aware of that
as you.  However, the person in question was talking about 4.3BSD, which
means they almost certainly had source code (no vendor is offering 4.3BSD
yet, since the 4.3BSD tape only came out recently).

Anybody with source has certainly learned by now that the UNIX documentation
is only a rough approximation to the truth.  The source code is, in some
cases, the final arbiter; in others, the documentation is correct.  The
*only* way to resolve this is a combination of additional knowledge and good
taste (to judge whether the change to the code implied by the documentation
is correct or not).

This is an awful situation.  With any luck, documentation from UNIX
resellers has been cleaned up somewhat; if not, beat up your vendor to
improve their documentation.
-- 
	Guy Harris
	{ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!guy
	guy@sun.com (or guy@sun.arpa)