[Gllug] Awk Sed

[Colin Coles]

> If you took the comment the way it was meant, I wasn't berating you, I
> was _warning_ you.

Sounded more like lampooning the author because you didn't like his coding 
style to me.

>
> That script will eat files. If you use the 'from file' function, you'd
> better make sure that it's character-perfect. A mis-placed ' ' on the
> end of a line and the script will start in / and keep going until it's

This simply isn't true, there are regex's that deal with this.

> searched-and-replaced _every_ file on your system - depending on what
> you're searching/replacing, and what user you are, you may well have
> just hosed your system. Running that over /dev would be especially
> interesting.
>

OK, fair enough people are stupid, have hangovers etc. it is a powerful tool 
and should be used with similar respect afforded to other powerfull tools. 
But if someone where to enter /dev as the search directory perhaps they 
shouldn't be left on their own, no different to rm -Rf really. Perhaps you 
have a different view of the intelligence of Linux users than me.

> Just because you've used it for a while and not suffered any problems
> with it doesn't mean that it is unproblematic - it has tons of problems.

One mans problem is another mans opportunity. The beauty of this OS is its 
configurability, with that comes danger, surely you must expect to meet these 
two in fairly equal proportions.

> The fact that it doesn't back up files before altering them and does

This I can see could possibly be a drawback, as some things may not be 
undoable. I personally have not come across such a situation though, I use it 
most days for one thing or another, it saves me a lot of time & work, if I 
hadn't found this script I would have written one myself and I don't think it 
would have been any different, for my uses it's perfect :)

> virtually no error checking / sanity checking only makes it worse -

Perhaps this could be improved, but how much hand-holding do you want? It 
assumes you know what you're doing. I'm sure you wouldn't prefer the 
Microsoft way, or is there a third way?

> people may well destroy data using this, it's only fair to warn them. If

True, perhaps an oversight on my part for which I apologise, maybe I should 
have included caveats apropos being used whilst drunk or undergoing an out of 
body experience. Would have thought it obvious myself though.

> you think that makes me bigoted, well, I don't care. The script is crap,
> but obviously I'm trolling, so I'll stop.

I don't think that this makes you a bigot but then it's not the crux of your 
last message. The script does exactly what it says on tin, not my idea of 
crap :)


-- 
Colin.

Si hoc signum legere potes, operis boni in rebus Latinus alacribus et 
fructuosis potiri potes.


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug