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“Do One Thing, And Do It Well”

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lawren...@gmail.com

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Oct 15, 2016, 12:35:12 AM10/15/16
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ldo@theon:~> man bash | wc -w
46427

Thoughts?

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 15, 2016, 7:27:45 AM10/15/16
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Subject: “Do One Thing, And Do It Well”
Yes. A lot of thoughts.

$ /usr/local/bin/my_thoughts -a -k "man bash" | wc -w
73623

Please explain what your actual issue is, and the relation to the subject
you have choosen, to have a basis for an exchange of thoughts. Thanks.

Janis

Kenny McCormack

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Oct 15, 2016, 7:39:11 AM10/15/16
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In article <ntt3rf$2bp$1...@news-1.m-online.net>,
Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Subject: Do One Thing, And Do It Well
>
>On 15.10.2016 06:35, lawren...@gmail.com wrote:
>> ldo@theon:~> man bash | wc -w
>> 46427
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
...
>Please explain what your actual issue is, and the relation to the subject
>you have choosen, to have a basis for an exchange of thoughts. Thanks.

It's pretty clear what OP's point is (for better or worse).
It's just stupid to pretend like you don't understand.

--
It's possible that leasing office space to a Starbucks is a greater liability
in today's GOP than is hitting your mother on the head with a hammer.

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 15, 2016, 8:01:03 AM10/15/16
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On 15.10.2016 13:39, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <ntt3rf$2bp$1...@news-1.m-online.net>,
> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Subject: Do One Thing, And Do It Well
>>
>> On 15.10.2016 06:35, lawren...@gmail.com wrote:
>>> ldo@theon:~> man bash | wc -w
>>> 46427
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>
> ...
>> Please explain what your actual issue is, and the relation to the subject
>> you have choosen, to have a basis for an exchange of thoughts. Thanks.
>
> It's pretty clear what OP's point is (for better or worse).
> It's just stupid to pretend like you don't understand.

Offences are obviously not unusual in the US nowadays, but then answer the
question what the number of words in a man page - too large, or too small? -
has to do with the subject instead of playing (yet again) the smartass. Has
bash too many features? Is the description too large (WRT the functionality),
or too small? What should be implemented, or what not? What shall be described
in the man page, and to what degree? - The original posting is as meaningless
as your sociopathic reply, sadly.

Janis

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 15, 2016, 8:35:15 AM10/15/16
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On 15.10.2016 13:39, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> Subject: Bash has too many features

I think if one wants a terse shell with less features there are options
you can choose from. But even a feature restricted dash shell needs its
features documented (1600 lines of text on my system, as opposed to 5500
for bash, 3100 for ksh, and not counting zsh because of its splitted man
page). So it's under the user's control what the user decides to use.

Kornshell (for example) has even more [even non-trivial] features, and
in her history bash has borrowed many of ksh features. Probably an issue
of competition. Having built-in features usually make shells faster than
shells that have to rely a lot on external programs, so it makes sense
to have a shell that has features beyond POSIX (or bourne).

The man pages reflect, IMO, the facts that there's no secondary standard
tutorial or reference manual; all what the shells support is described.
After all, shells are complete (and even complex) programming languages.
There are at least two problems I see with those specific man pages; one
is that the shell syntax in conjunction with the "unstructured" man page
format makes it hard to find certain topics, specifically if entities are
searched that contain only non-alpha symbols, and then you buy details
(e.g. descriptions of history editor modes that you don't use) that are
very bulky (but somewhere it needs to be documented).

So my resume would be; we can choose what shell we use, we have documented
what the shells do. Discussions of whether specific feature selections are
sensible or not are thus (and anyway) not very helpful. YMMV.

Janis

Lew Pitcher

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Oct 15, 2016, 10:52:08 AM10/15/16
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On Saturday October 15 2016 08:00, in comp.unix.shell, "Janis Papanagnou"
<janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On 15.10.2016 13:39, Kenny McCormack wrote:
>> In article <ntt3rf$2bp$1...@news-1.m-online.net>,
>> Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> Subject: Do One Thing, And Do It Well
>>>
>>> On 15.10.2016 06:35, lawren...@gmail.com wrote:
>>>> ldo@theon:~> man bash | wc -w
>>>> 46427
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>> ...
>>> Please explain what your actual issue is, and the relation to the subject
>>> you have choosen, to have a basis for an exchange of thoughts. Thanks.
>>
>> It's pretty clear what OP's point is (for better or worse).
>> It's just stupid to pretend like you don't understand.
>
> Offences are obviously not unusual in the US nowadays, but then answer the
> question what the number of words in a man page - too large, or too small?

Not an even number.
Not a prime number.
Not factorable by a prime number under 103.

> - has to do with the subject instead of playing (yet again) the smartass.

The number of features a program has does not always correlate to the number
of words used to describe those features in the manpage.

I've seen featurefull programs with exceedingly terse man pages where you were
expected to use the program's -? or --help option to determine what features
were available. Conversely, I've seen featureless programs (with only -V
and -? options) with disproportionately verbose man pages.

--
Lew Pitcher
"In Skills, We Trust"
PGP public key available upon request

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 15, 2016, 5:17:06 PM10/15/16
to
On 15.10.2016 16:52, Lew Pitcher wrote:
[...]
>
> The number of features a program has does not always correlate to the number
> of words used to describe those features in the manpage.

Sure. Now can you guess what the OP intended to express? (Too many features?
Too few features?[*] Too verbose a man page (absolutely)? Too verbose a man
page (relative to the number of features)? To hard to learn shells features
from the man page? Too hard to find topics in huge man pages?) If it's that
clear - to me it isn't - why don't you just clarify how to interpret the OP,
or, yet better, provide an answer to the OP's question.

I think it's quite pointless to assume any modern shell to be simplistic;
they are, after all, programming languages, and there are requirements and
user expectations, e.g. for performance, that can't be satisfied if the shell
relies on external tools for every simple task (like string manipulation).

>
> I've seen featurefull programs with exceedingly terse man pages where you were
> expected to use the program's -? or --help option to determine what features
> were available.

Or a terse --help information and a complete description in the man page (as
for example in the given context of bash, ksh, zsh). What does that tell us
WRT the OP's posting? (Not much, I'd say, but feel free to explain.)

> Conversely, I've seen featureless programs (with only -V
> and -? options) with disproportionately verbose man pages.

I wouldn't consider specifically a shell like bash as featureless, so I don't
see what insights that comment contributes to clarify the OP's intention.

Janis

[*] The original topic was “Do One Thing, And Do It Well”; to satisfy that
tools should have a complete coverage of their specific application domain.
The converse interpretation (to restrict the possibilities of a programming
language to handle "OS entities") would require quite a bit more effort [of
the OP] to suggest in what ways and to what degree any restriction of bash
(or shells generally) should be done, which trade-offs we could accept, etc.

Brian Patrie

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Oct 15, 2016, 6:34:26 PM10/15/16
to
On 2016-10-15 07:35, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
> But even a feature restricted dash shell needs its
> features documented (1600 lines of text on my system, as opposed to 5500
> for bash, 3100 for ksh, and not counting zsh because of its splitted man
> page).

%$ man zshall | wc -lw
19710 198620

Meanwhile, the original post may have been commenting on wc's
simplicity. Or, perhaps, it was juxtaposing it with bash's complexity.
It's impossible to be sure (which was, of course, the point of the
followup that presumed to change the subject line).

Lew Pitcher

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Oct 15, 2016, 8:55:38 PM10/15/16
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On Saturday October 15 2016 17:17, in comp.unix.shell, "Janis Papanagnou"
<janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

> On 15.10.2016 16:52, Lew Pitcher wrote:
> [...]
>>
>> The number of features a program has does not always correlate to the
>> number of words used to describe those features in the manpage.
>
> Sure. Now can you guess what the OP intended to express? (Too many features?
> Too few features?[*]

I already /gave/ my guesses, but let me restate them here:
(With respect to the number of words in the manpage)
>  Not an even number.
>  Not a prime number.
>  Not factorable by a prime number under 103.

Otherwise, I have no other observations or opinions.

Salut!

Ed Morton

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Oct 15, 2016, 9:02:52 PM10/15/16
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You have too much free time.

Ed.

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 16, 2016, 2:09:33 AM10/16/16
to
On 16.10.2016 02:55, Lew Pitcher wrote:
> On Saturday October 15 2016 17:17, in comp.unix.shell, "Janis Papanagnou"
> <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 15.10.2016 16:52, Lew Pitcher wrote:
>> [...]
>>>
>>> The number of features a program has does not always correlate to the
>>> number of words used to describe those features in the manpage.
>>
>> Sure. Now can you guess what the OP intended to express? (Too many features?
>> Too few features?[*]
>
> I already /gave/ my guesses, but let me restate them here:
> (With respect to the number of words in the manpage)

(And I thought I did you a favour to strip that nonsense in my reply.)

>> Not an even number.
>> Not a prime number.
>> Not factorable by a prime number under 103.
>
> Otherwise, I have no other observations or opinions.

Usually you have something sensible to say. Well...

Janis

>
> Salut!
>

Janis Papanagnou

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Oct 16, 2016, 2:20:16 AM10/16/16
to
On 16.10.2016 00:34, Brian Patrie wrote:
>
> Meanwhile, the original post may have been commenting on wc's simplicity. Or,
> perhaps, it was juxtaposing it with bash's complexity. It's impossible to be
> sure (which was, of course, the point of the followup that presumed to change
> the subject line).

Yes, we can't be sure. The post was too fuzzy. WRT the change of the subject
line - and I commented the original posting based on that interpretation
elsethread -, it's only one possibility. In the past, I recall quite well,
there was one of the regulars, an old-timer and experienced person, who
pointed out that object oriented features would make a lot sense in shells.
It's obviously debatable whether to extend, restrict, or keep the shells'
technical domain. But to debate something we'd need substantial statements.

Janis

Joerg.S...@fokus.fraunhofer.de

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Nov 4, 2016, 6:45:05 AM11/4/16
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In article <ntt7q0$3g0$1...@news-1.m-online.net>,
Janis Papanagnou <janis_pa...@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Kornshell (for example) has even more [even non-trivial] features, and
>in her history bash has borrowed many of ksh features. Probably an issue
>of competition. Having built-in features usually make shells faster than
>shells that have to rely a lot on external programs, so it makes sense
>to have a shell that has features beyond POSIX (or bourne).

The main problem with these builtins is that they do not behave the same as if
the command was external and they even may be incompatible.

In order to avoid the first problem, ksh93 added a feature to lookup builtins
via a PATH search.

As long as this is missing in other shells, those shells may cause more
problems that advantages.

--
EMail:jo...@schily.net (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
joerg.s...@fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL: http://cdrecord.org/private/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/
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