Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner wrote:
> I'm a programmer who's currently stuck in a sysadmin/netadmin role and for
> the past two months I've done nothing but put out fires nearly every day
> (and this is a network of Linux boxes---if you treat Linux as Unix, then it
> may be slightly on topic 8-) what with problems with INND (almost 10 years
> old) and Sendmail (15 years old and still a security nightmare [3]) and
> poorly written, non-documented cryptic and convoluted shell scripts in Perl
> [4]
> [4] Which takes the worst aspects of Basic, C, shell, awk, grep and
> C++ with none of the good aspects. Blech. [5]
>
> [5] IMNSHO 8-)
Oh, Perl is a good language, I have enormous respect for Larry Wall.
Remember that there has never been a language written in which it is
impossible to write bad programs. Admittedly I don't use it as much
as I should (it's too new), as a sysadmin type my main language is
still the Bourne shell and its descendants after all these years.
And even when I write scripts for ksh and bash, I try to stick to
the subset compatible with the original, since that way they'll run
on my Tandy 6000 and AT&T 7300s. (Oh, I do document even my simplest
scripts, since there are several that have been evolving for a decade
and a half, since my days as a Tandy tech support guy).
And I challenge you to find any "non-worst" aspects of awk. After
almost 16 years, I still can't use it without having the man page
immediately at hand.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
WARNING: The Attorney General has determined that Alcohol, Tobacco,
and Firearms can be hazardous to your health -- and get away with it.
Received on Sun Nov 01 1998 - 08:53:13 GMT