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From: wayne@ames.arpa
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Pet peeve #1473
Message-ID: <9001@brl-adm.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 19:57:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-adm.9001
Posted: Tue Aug 25 19:57:24 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Aug-87 02:34:30 EDT
Sender: news@brl-adm.ARPA
Lines: 27

No flame against the poster, but when I saw the following come by
today it reminded me of what I think is the absolute *WORST* of the
"UNIX philosophy":

>>>>  #define STRERR()  ((errno >=0 && errno < sys_nerr) ? \
>>>>                     sys_errlist[errno] : "Unknown error")

What's wrong with this?  Simply that it doesn't tell you what the
unknown value of errno *IS*!  When  I first saw code like this in
"perror" itself I absolutely could not believe it.  Sure it takes a
miniscule amount more work to print "Unknown error 666."  But you see,
that's *exactly* what I meant by "UNIX philosophy": it's fine as long
as you don't ever make a mistake, but boy if you ever should, then not
only is UNIX not going to help, it's gonna *HIDE* the one piece of
debugging information it has!

    "The number you reached, which I am not going to tell you
     so you won't know whether you misdialed or not and will
     have to try again, is not in service."

Sheesh!

      Wayne Hathaway                  ultra!wayne@Ames.ARPA
      Ultra Network Technologies
      2140 Bering drive               with a domain server:
      San Jose, CA 95131                 wayne@Ultra.COM
      408-922-0100