[2138] in SIPB bug reports
where
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Calvin Clark)
Thu Oct 3 21:14:01 1991
Date: Thu, 3 Oct 91 21:13:29 -0400
From: Calvin Clark <ckclark@Athena.MIT.EDU>
To: Ken Raeburn <Raeburn@MIT.EDU>
Cc: marc@Athena.MIT.EDU, bug-sipb@Athena.MIT.EDU, ckclark@MIT.EDU,
Reply-To: ckclark@mit.edu
>>>>> On Thu, 3 Oct 91 15:35:51 -0400, Ken Raeburn <Raeburn@MIT.EDU> said:
Ken> The only other reasonable course I see is to wait until
Ken> Athena replaces /bin/csh on the BSD platforms with tcsh-6,
Ken> then tell people to always use "which", and not care if
Ken> they get ioctl messages from uses in sh scripts.
Actually, the message
ioctl: Operation not supported on socket
will not be produced by using "which" in csh scripts where /bin/csh is
the Cornell tcsh-6.00; it seems that problem was fixed. So if Athena
were to adopt tcsh-6.00 as /bin/csh on all the platforms (replacing the
vendor csh on some), then this would not be a problem. In any case, the
`where' program does not seem to be taking up enough space to warrant
this discussion. Of the 186 binaries stored in, for example,
/mit/sipb/rtbin, 56 of them do not have man pages installed. Many of
these do not need man pages, e.g., one can probably use the ``rn'' man
page for use with the ``rn.old'' program. Some of the programs need to
be there, but are not to be considered user commands. The discuss
client ``edsc'' falls into this category. Few people would try to use
this from the command line, and if they do, then it won't be much fun:
Oct 3 (20:50) bill-the-cat:/mit/sipb/rtbin
[18]% ./edsc
hi
;Incorrect syntax
help
;Incorrect syntax
quit
;Incorrect syntax
eat flaming death
;Incorrect syntax
^C
Many of the 56 manless binaries are obscure, and the only way to find
out what they are is by either running them blindly or reading the
source code---that is, if you can find the source code, since the source
for a given program may be in a directory in the source tree not
immediately obvious from the name of the binary.
I think that more people use ``where' than, say, ``qedx,'' which takes
up twice the space, although the latter is arguably of hysterical value.
Also, some of the programs, like ``saa,'' do not seem to be furthering
the goals of the SIPB, and probably do not belong in the SIPB locker at
all, whereas the ``where'' program is documented and has demonstrable
use as a utility providing a function which is not otherwise available
on some Athena platforms.
-Calvin
