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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Counting files created in /tmp
Message-ID: <1990Feb2.151153.14686@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 2 Feb 90 15:11:53 GMT
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In article <22047@unix.cis.pitt.edu>, yahoo@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Kenneth L Moore)
writes:
> So what's your point? If the guy didn't know to do an "ls /tmp" he probably
> doesn't know how to program very well. Hence, "ls /tmp" is the SIMPLE answer.

1. "The guy" is quite aware of how to do "ls /tmp".  He is also quite
aware that
   the statistics generated in that manner will be relatively useless. 
Hence his
   question about how to do it some other way.

   It was fairly obvious to me, although apparently not to you, that someone
   asking about how to find out about file creation and lifetimes in /tmp is
   probably sufficiently knowledgeable about Unix to know what "ls" is.

2. Since you seem so sure of "the guy"s level of knowledge about Unix, have you
   gotten your information through private E-mail correspondence with him?  I
   have.

3. Despite the fact that I know that "the guy" is quite aware of what ls is,
   let's assume for a moment that he doesn't.  Even assuming that, the fact
   still remains that ls is NOT going to be able to give him the statistics he
   needs.  It just can't do it.  Therefore, he's going to have to learn enough
   programming to write the C code that reads a directory in order to do his
   gathering of statistics.  Hence my answer.

   But this, of course, is irrelevant because he *does* know how to use
ls, and I
   suspect he already knows how to use the C directory-reading routines.
  
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