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Path: utzoo!utgpu!utcsri!greg
From: greg@utcsri.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Pet peeve #1473
Message-ID: <5315@utcsri.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 26-Aug-87 12:42:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsri.5315
Posted: Wed Aug 26 12:42:48 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Aug-87 01:09:21 EDT
References: <9001@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: greg@utcsri.UUCP (Gregory Smith)
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 29
Summary: 

In article <9001@brl-adm.ARPA> wayne@ames.arpa writes:
>>>>>  #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."
>
My favorite is the error message from the MS-DOS 'rmdir' command:

'Invalid path, File not found, or Directory not empty'.

As you may have guessed, this is the only error message that rmdir
can produce.		' ... or maybe I'm just stupid.'


-- 
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Greg Smith     University of Toronto      UUCP: ..utzoo!utcsri!greg
Have vAX, will hack...