[6661] in Perl-Users-Digest
Perl-Users Digest, Issue: 286 Volume: 8
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Sat Apr 12 04:17:09 1997
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 97 01:00:35 -0700
From: Perl-Users Digest <Perl-Users-Request@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU>
To: Perl-Users@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (Perl-Users Digest)
Perl-Users Digest Sat, 12 Apr 1997 Volume: 8 Number: 286
Today's topics:
Re: <img src="../../cgi-shl/activity.pl"> <eryq@enteract.com>
Re: CGI.pm and redirect (I R A Aggie)
Re: Error when using Accept <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: exit: and foreach (I R A Aggie)
Re: File Read/Write Problem <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: FTP?? (I R A Aggie)
Re: how do you use assert.p[lh] <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: HTML document title <eryq@enteract.com>
I've broken my mirror.pl (bad luck...) (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: LWP - again... <aas@bergen.sn.no>
Re: Math function <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: Multiple mail! <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: Multiple mail! <sbo@unix.okg.se>
Re: Multiple mail! <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: output duplication problem <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: Parsing a file backwards <eryq@enteract.com>
Re: QUESTION: "assert.ph:15: unterminated character co <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: security without a secure server <rra@stanford.edu>
Re: splitting and reading data in an elm mailbox (Rachel Polanskis)
Re: Transliterate from a pattern? <rra@stanford.edu>
Unable to spawn child process <brian@pbmo.net>
Re: Unique Filename (Nathan V. Patwardhan)
Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...) <tim@a-sis.com>
Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...) (Peter Seebach)
Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...) (Hume Smith)
url_get Question <omc@worldnet.att.net>
Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 8 Mar 97) (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 01:15:21 -0500
From: Eryq <eryq@enteract.com>
To: David Baker <dbaker@dkburnap.com>
Subject: Re: <img src="../../cgi-shl/activity.pl">
Message-Id: <334F2879.34786E05@enteract.com>
David Baker wrote:
>
> I am using this in a frameset to auto execute a cgi.
*sniff sniff* Hmm, smells like a counter- or ad-generator...
> It works ok with
> Netscape, but IE wants to load the cgi twice. This cgi is used for
> tracking and the double load issue wont cut it.
>
> Any ideas as to why this is happening?
Ask Microsoft and/or comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi.
Seriously: this is related to (1) the HTTP header you're returning,
and (2) the design of MSIE. Possibly MSIE starts out by doing
a HEAD request, and then does a GET. You could eliminate this
problem by only tallying when REQUEST_METHOD = GET. Or, it might
be a cacheing or expiration thing. Or, MSIE could just be dumb.
But the real answer, as comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi
would no doubt tell you, is NOT to tally user accesses this
way. Use the HTTPD server logs; that's what they're there for.
HTH,
--
___ _ _ _ _ ___ _ Eryq (eryq@enteract.com)
/ _ \| '_| | | |/ _ ' / Hughes STX, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cntr.
| __/| | | |_| | |_| | http://www.enteract.com/~eryq
\___||_| \__, |\__, |___/\ Visit STREETWISE, Chicago's newspaper by/
|___/ |______/ of the homeless: http://www.streetwise.org
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 15:55:27 -0500
From: fl_aggie@hotmail.com (I R A Aggie)
Subject: Re: CGI.pm and redirect
Message-Id: <fl_aggie-ya02408000R1004971555270001@news.fsu.edu>
In article <334D482B.7BF9@scott.net>, ghouston@scott.net wrote:
+ use CGI;
+ $query = new CGI;
+ print $query->redirect( 'http://www.BhamOnline.com/' );
+ Does it produce the 'Location:' or 'URI:' field in the HTTP header (or
+ both)?
You can run such interactively, if you modify the 'new CGI' line to:
$query = new CGI({});
^^^^creates an empty query
The results are:
----------------
Status: 302 Found
Location: http://www.BhamOnline.com/
URI: <http://www.BhamOnline.com/>
Content-type: text/html
----------------
Both, I think. :)
James
--
Consulting Minster for Consultants, DNRC
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 21:02:15 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: Joe Orth <joeo@hpfcjoe.fc.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Error when using Accept
Message-Id: <qum3eswhos8.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Joe Orth <joeo@hpfcjoe.fc.hp.com> writes:
> I also had an ALM signal handler running in my script. Whenever the
> alarm would go off (I can duplicated it using kill -14 <pid>), the
> accept would die with the error message that was in my previous post
Perl does not have reliable signal handling. There is currently no way to
reliably interrupt a system call in progress with a signal and be assured
that Perl won't segfault or otherwise do something very strange.
This has been discussed in great detail on perl5-porters, and there is
some discussion of ways to possibly fix this, but it won't be fixed by
5.004.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 16:10:27 -0500
From: fl_aggie@hotmail.com (I R A Aggie)
Subject: Re: exit: and foreach
Message-Id: <fl_aggie-ya02408000R1004971610270001@news.fsu.edu>
In article <01bc45e4$67671480$1991e9cd@garcia.huron.net>, "Stephen Hill"
<scs@huron.net> wrote:
[posted && cc'd]
+ I have part of the script below. Is there anyway to have it stop doing the
+ foreach loop?
% man perlfunc
[snip]
Keywords related to the control flow of your perl program
caller, continue, die, do, dump, eval, exit, goto,
last, next, redo, return, sub, wantarray
Hmmm...last...[snip]
last The last command is like the break statement in C
(as used in loops); it immediately exits the loop in
question. If the LABEL is omitted, the command
refers to the innermost enclosing loop. The
continue block, if any, is not executed:
LINE: while (<STDIN>) {
last LINE if /^$/; # exit when done with header
...
}
There's only one problem with Perl - it is so excruciatingly well documented
that questions like this shouldn't come up. Learn to love your documentation!
James - man pages, html documents, printed in books, even available as a PDF
document
--
Consulting Minster for Consultants, DNRC
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 21:28:16 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: syoung@actcom.co.il (Sara Young)
Subject: Re: File Read/Write Problem
Message-Id: <qumpvw0g90f.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Sara Young <syoung@actcom.co.il> writes:
> But what if I just want to write to a file (destroying what was there
> before), and I want to allow other scripts to read the file even while
> it is being updated?
> Instead of using open (FILE, ">filename"), wouldn't it be more
> appropriate to use open (FILE, "+<filename")?
No, actually, ">filename" would be easier since then you wouldn't have to
truncate the file yourself. Perl (well, actually, the OS) will do it for
you, and other scripts will be able to read from the file while you're
writing just fine. Just make sure to do something like:
my $oldfh = select FILE;
$| = 1;
select $oldfh;
to make sure the FILE filehandle is autoflushed so that the data is
written to disk.
> Would it be necessary to use a temporary file?
Not when you don't want to save the original file contents.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 1997 17:31:24 -0500
From: fl_aggie@hotmail.com (I R A Aggie)
Subject: Re: FTP??
Message-Id: <fl_aggie-ya02408000R1004971731240001@news.fsu.edu>
In article <334C53CF.7528@ionet.net>, Biju Kurian <rootlink@ionet.net> wrote:
[posted && cc'd]
+ Please help, any way is acceptable.
+ Insigts are highly appreciated.
Take a look at Net::FTP. It should be able to get you the required
information so the script can determine which files to transfer.
James
--
Consulting Minster for Consultants, DNRC
To cure your perl CGI problems, please look at:
<url:http://www.perl.com/perl/faq/idiots-guide.html>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 20:43:25 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: ceh@sundance.sce.carleton.ca (Curtis Hrischuk)
Subject: Re: how do you use assert.p[lh]
Message-Id: <qum7mi8hpnm.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Curtis Hrischuk <ceh@sundance.sce.carleton.ca> writes:
> Hi. I just tried to use assert.p[lh] that comes with the distribution
> (version 5.001) and it does not seem to behave like the assert I have
> come to know and love. I am using it in the following fashion. What
> is wrong with the way I am using it?
> #include <assert.ph>
> requrie 'assert.pl'
Drop the #include; you don't need it. (You also spelled require wrong,
which I assume is a typo.)
> main::assert('0');
Why the main::?
cyclone:~> perl -e 'require "assert.pl"; assert ("0")'
panic: ASSERTION BOTCHED: 0
$ = &main::panic('ASSERTION BOTCHED: 0', '') from file /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.003/assert.pl line 15
$ = &main::assert(0) from file -e line 1
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 01:08:27 -0500
From: Eryq <eryq@enteract.com>
To: David Baker <dbaker@dkburnap.com>
Subject: Re: HTML document title
Message-Id: <334F26DB.2AE5FA76@enteract.com>
David Baker wrote:
>
> What is the best way to get this inf. from Perl?
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
If you're parsing HTML, why not try HTML::Parser. I think
there's even a "lite" version that just parses information
from the <head>...</head> container... I forget what it's called,
but no doubt you'll find it on the CPAN and/or in the Module
List.
Hope that helps,
--
___ _ _ _ _ ___ _ Eryq (eryq@enteract.com)
/ _ \| '_| | | |/ _ ' / Hughes STX, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cntr.
| __/| | | |_| | |_| | http://www.enteract.com/~eryq
\___||_| \__, |\__, |___/\ Visit STREETWISE, Chicago's newspaper by/
|___/ |______/ of the homeless: http://www.streetwise.org
------------------------------
Date: 12 Apr 1997 00:23:40 -0500
From: les@MCS.COM (Leslie Mikesell)
Subject: I've broken my mirror.pl (bad luck...)
Message-Id: <5in68s$23m$1@Venus.mcs.net>
I changed too many things at once and now mirror.pl says:
Number found where operator expected at (eval 37) line 1, near ") 0"
(Missing operator before 0?)
Undefined subroutine &ftp::set_signals called at /usr/lib/perl5/mirror.pl
line 983.
But I didn't change ftp.pl.
What I did do: (on a Linux box)
Installed perl5.00393 (but running with the 5.003 version doesn't work now).
Installed the CPAN module.
Installed Bundle::Apache
Went a bit wild letting CPAN install other modules because it is
fun to watch...
Tried to run mirror.pl which complained about not finding socket.ph.
Ran h2ph, including the linux and asm subdirectories.
Now I get the error above. What should I try next?
Les Mikesell
les@mcs.com
------------------------------
Date: 12 Apr 1997 08:02:50 +0200
From: Gisle Aas <aas@bergen.sn.no>
Subject: Re: LWP - again...
Message-Id: <hg1wwhj79.fsf@bergen.sn.no>
Randal Schwartz <merlyn@stonehenge.com> writes:
> use LWP::UserAgent;
> use HTTP::Request;
> my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;
>
> my @url_list = qw(
> http://www.perl.org/
> http://www.perl.com/perl/
> );
>
> for my $url (@url_list) {
> my $request = new HTTP::Request("GET", $url);
> my $response = $ua->request($request);
> printf "%40s %s\n", $url,
> scalar localtime $response->last_modified;
> }
Or as a (rather long) one-liner:
perl -MLWP::Simple -ne 'chomp; printf "%40s %s\n", $_, scalar localtime((head $_)[2])' <url_list
--
Gisle Aas <aas@sn.no>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 21:40:12 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: Antonio Paulo Salgado Forster <forster@hq.rnp.br>
Subject: Re: Math function
Message-Id: <qumlo6og8gj.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Antonio Paulo Salgado Forster <forster@hq.rnp.br> writes:
> I've been trying to evaluate a math function given by the user, but I
> have no idea of how to do that...
> the function would be in a variable and I would make a loop to get the
> values do design a graph...
$function = 'sub user_function { ' . $function . ' }';
eval $function;
if ($@) { warn "Function $function did not compile\n"; die $@ }
...
$value = user_function (@input);
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 20:03:17 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: Bo Svderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se>
Subject: Re: Multiple mail!
Message-Id: <qumg1wxgcy2.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Bo Svderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se> writes:
> I like to send a mail to a nuber of adresses that I have in a file calld
> adressfile. How can I do to get it to work?
Set up a mailing list, which is pretty trivial to do with most versions of
sendmail. Alternately, include the addresses on a Bcc header in your
message. This has nothing to do with Perl in particular, actually.
(I assume that all the people in that file have requested the mail you're
about to send them.)
> I also wunder hov to do to cut only the head from a message and save it
> in a file.
There are a variety of cute ways to do this, but the one that occurs to me
on short notice is:
perl -pe 'exit if /^$/' message > file
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 06:18:32 +0200
From: Bo Bvderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se>
Subject: Re: Multiple mail!
Message-Id: <334F0D18.2D38@unix.okg.se>
Russ Allbery wrote:
Thanks!
That i like to di is setting up a mailinglist.
Can you tell me how to do or where to find out how to do with sendmail?
>
> [ Posted and mailed. ]
>
> Bo Svderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se> writes:
>
> > I like to send a mail to a nuber of adresses that I have in a file calld
> > adressfile. How can I do to get it to work?
>
> Set up a mailing list, which is pretty trivial to do with most versions of
> sendmail. Alternately, include the addresses on a Bcc header in your
> message. This has nothing to do with Perl in particular, actually.
>
> (I assume that all the people in that file have requested the mail you're
> about to send them.)
>
> > I also wunder hov to do to cut only the head from a message and save it
> > in a file.
>
> There are a variety of cute ways to do this, but the one that occurs to me
> on short notice is:
>
> perl -pe 'exit if /^$/' message > file
>
> --
> Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 12 Apr 1997 00:45:39 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: Bo Bvderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se>
Subject: Re: Multiple mail!
Message-Id: <qum912ofzvg.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Bo Bvderquist <sbo@unix.okg.se> writes:
> That i like to di is setting up a mailinglist. Can you tell me how to
> do or where to find out how to do with sendmail?
Sure. The easiest way is to just include an alias in /etc/aliases of the
form:
list-name: :include:/path/to/list/of/addresses
and then send mail to that list. Alternately, if you or your ISP run or
want to run majordomo (available from ftp.greatcircle.com), you can set up
much nicer and easier to run (and largely self-running) mailing lists.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 21:06:11 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: Sungwoo Cho <sungwoo.cho@ebay.sun.com>
Subject: Re: output duplication problem
Message-Id: <qumybaoga18.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Sungwoo Cho <sungwoo.cho@ebay.sun.com> writes:
> I am trying to send both output and error messages to more than one file
> and having a hanging problem. I included my script at the bottom of
> this message. I am using Perl4 on Solaris 2.4.
This is almost certainly your problem. Perl 4 is obsolete and no longer
supported, as well as plagued by a number of bugs. The most recent
released version of Perl is 5.003; the most recent beta is 5.004beta
(which I recommend, actually, over 5.003). Upgrading will solve most
problems with strange behavior.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 00:59:22 -0500
From: Eryq <eryq@enteract.com>
To: Heather <hls@hpfitst2.fc.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Parsing a file backwards
Message-Id: <334F24BA.10A8D172@enteract.com>
Heather wrote:
>
> How do I open a file from within a perl script and parse it from the
> bottom up, as opposed to top down, which seems to be the default.
>
> Thanks,
> Heather
open FILE,"yourfile" or die "open: $!";
@lines = reverse(<FILE>);
close FILE;
Now go through the @lines. Hope you have enough core!
--
___ _ _ _ _ ___ _ Eryq (eryq@enteract.com)
/ _ \| '_| | | |/ _ ' / Hughes STX, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cntr.
| __/| | | |_| | |_| | http://www.enteract.com/~eryq
\___||_| \__, |\__, |___/\ Visit STREETWISE, Chicago's newspaper by/
|___/ |______/ of the homeless: http://www.streetwise.org
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 20:38:26 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: ceh@sundance.sce.carleton.ca (Curtis Hrischuk)
Subject: Re: QUESTION: "assert.ph:15: unterminated character constant"
Message-Id: <qumbu7khpvx.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Curtis Hrischuk <ceh@sundance.sce.carleton.ca> writes:
> Hi. I am using the perl standard "assert.p[lh]". However, I am getting
> the following warning and I was wondering what it means:
> assert.ph:19: unterminated character constant
It means that h2ph didn't produce proper Perl code because it failed to
parse your C headers. You'll have to tweak assert.ph by hand.
BTW, assert.pl doesn't require assert.ph.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 21:18:41 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: lcole@best.com (Len Coleman)
Subject: Re: security without a secure server
Message-Id: <qumu3lcg9ge.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Len Coleman <lcole@best.com> writes:
> Can I encrypt all or part of the form data from a credit card
> transaction?
> Are there scripts designed for this purpose?
> It would seem that even a simple encryption method were used, the
> transaction would be far more secure than plain text.
Any encryption scheme has to be supported by both the server (your CGI
script and web server) *and* the client (the user's browser). You're
therefore limited to the security methods supported by common browsers
such as Netscape, all of which to my knowledge require security to be
implemented at the web server level.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 16:13:47 GMT
From: rachel@virago.org.au (Rachel Polanskis)
Subject: Re: splitting and reading data in an elm mailbox
Message-Id: <5ilnvr$jem@janis.virago.org.au>
In article <5ifd6o$bvr@janis.virago.org.au>,
rachel@juno.virago.org.au (Rachel Polanskis) writes:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to write a program to scan an elm mailbox
> and then print out stats based on the data contained in the "From " envelope
> header, the Subject: and the body of the message.
>
Thanks guys...
Your suggestions were all I needed.
rachel
defghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz: What? No ABC?
--
Rachel Polanskis Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove@zeta.org.au http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
r.polanskis@nepean.uws.edu.au http://www.nepean.uws.edu.au/ccd/
Witty comment revoked due to funding cuts
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 22:08:47 -0700
From: Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
To: jefflv@tir.com (Jeff Vannest)
Subject: Re: Transliterate from a pattern?
Message-Id: <qumhghcg74w.fsf@cyclone.stanford.edu>
[ Posted and mailed. ]
Jeff Vannest <jefflv@tir.com> writes:
> Does anyone know of a method of transliterating a string by a pattern?
> It's not even really a transliteration; I want to delete leading and
> trailing spaces from a string.
$string =~ s/^\s+//;
$string =~ s/\s+$//;
--
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
------------------------------
Date: 12 Apr 1997 03:01:48 GMT
From: "Brian Becker" <brian@pbmo.net>
Subject: Unable to spawn child process
Message-Id: <01bc46ed$dc824690$27f3d9c7@nt4-1>
Any ideas how I can get this to go away? I'm getting major server errors
and the line is repeated over and over in my apache log. I'm running perl
code on a freeBSD box.
Thanks
Brian Becker
Poplar Bluff Internet, Inc.
http://www.pbmo.net
------------------------------
Date: 12 Apr 1997 03:07:22 GMT
From: nvp@shore.net (Nathan V. Patwardhan)
Subject: Re: Unique Filename
Message-Id: <5imu9a$s10@fridge-nf0.shore.net>
Dan Louderback (dloud@erols.com) wrote:
: Anyone have ideas on how to generate unique filenames limited to 8.3
: notation?
Sure. Make sure the basename is no greater than 8 characters, and the
extension no more than 3. Make sure that each filename is different. :-)
--
Nathan V. Patwardhan
nvp@shore.net
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 18:56:30 GMT
From: "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@a-sis.com>
Subject: Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...)
Message-Id: <01bc469f$fa807c00$87ee6fce@timpent.a-sis.com>
jason olmsted <olmstj@phat-media.com> wrote in article <5ik0lt$cjq$2@news9.gte.net>...
> On Thu, 10 Apr 97 21:41:15 GMT, tomw@tsys.demon.co.uk (Tom Wheeley)
> > olmstj@phat-media.com "jason olmsted" writes:
> >> I don't share the belief, but a fair number of people believe
> >> Microsoft Internet Explorer is a superior product to Netscape
> >> Navigator.
> >>
> >> Mind you, these people must not care about security or platform
> >> consistency, but there it is, a "free" product that is on par with a
> >> commercial one (though who knows how much we'll pay for it in the end)
> >
> >MSIE is ***not*** a free product. It is a commercial product dumped on the
> >market by Microsoft to attempt to gain control of how people see the
> >internet.
>
> I don't mean to be rude, but if they license it to me at no cost to
> me, then it is free. If they take a loss in the process, hey, that's
> their problem. If they have a sinister plot behind it, hey that's
> something else altogether. Right now, there are no restrictions of
> use except for the State Department guidelines for blocking export to
> certain nation-states.
>
> I won't let my lack of love for Microsoft cloud my logic. Freeware
> means freely distributed software and MSIE falls in that class.
But irrelevent to the point of the thread. The product was
developed using commercial money by people paid for the work.
Why isn't there a better browser developed by people in their
spare time interested only in the "love of their craft" and not
in such blase things as mere money?
--
==========================================================================
| Tim Behrendsen (tim@a-sis.com) | http://www.cerfnet.com/~timb |
| "Judge all, and be prepared to be judged by all." |
==========================================================================
------------------------------
Date: 11 Apr 1997 22:14:35 -0500
From: seebs@solutions.solon.com (Peter Seebach)
Subject: Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...)
Message-Id: <5imumr$qtf@solutions.solon.com>
In article <01bc4680$d375c440$87ee6fce@timpent.a-sis.com>,
Tim Behrendsen <tim@a-sis.com> wrote:
>I didn't say it was better or worse than anything. It is a
>marvelous, useful program. It is simply a marvelous, useful
>program that is not tremendously complex. Or do you think any
>program, of any complexity, can always be done in < 100,000 LOC?
I've never seen a program over about 50KLOC that didn't have a lot
of duplication, or, essentially, a lot of databasing built in.
(For instance, gcc has a *LOT* of processor type databases in what
I consider the "code" of it; the actual compiler has some duplication,
but not as much.)
>The brilliance of Perl is the syntax and design, not the
>implementation. Perl4 and Perl5 are uncommented crap. Quite
>frankly, (no offense intended, Larry Wall -- I love Perl), I
>would be embarrassed to release code without any comments.
Looking at it quickly, I see very little in it that, IMHO, calls
for commenting. The higher level design documents are not
in the code, but the raw code is mostly fairly readable. Of course,
part of this is that I know a bit about the layout... but it's
really not that bad.
Compared to, say, MFC, it's delightfully clear.
>I never said that they were, and it's ridiculous to say "every
>Windows program has to do everything" because you know it's not
>true. Hyperbole adds nothing to your point.
It's not entirely true, but it's fairly close. There's an amazing
amount of duplication of basic system functionality in all of these
programs. How many windows programs *don't* contain code to make
directories and browse file systems?
>In any case, the central question is whether it is possible to add
>value to something such that a price can be set for it. If a freeware
>product is good enough that it's not worth adding value to it, then a
>commercial version will never show up.
And, if it's good enough that it *is* worth adding value to it, it's
often cheaper to hire a third party to add the value *and keep that
value in the free product*. Look at the amount of work done on gcc
*for money*, and notice that just about all of that work goes straight
back to the community...
>As a program gets more complex, the number of areas that are not
>optimal or not implemented at all is going to naturally increase,
>which is why the more complex the product, the higher the chances
>that a commercial version is going to be better overall, simply
>because of opportunity, greater resources and profit motive.
I disagree; as a program gets more complex, the chances that the very,
very young free community will have gotten to it are smaller, but the
chances improve that a free one will be dramatically better, because
the target market can be a lot wider and a lot more skilled. Also,
the marginal value to a commercial vendor of a bug fix is miniscule.
Why does Microsoft Word not support TIFF 6, which has been the TIFF standard
since 1992? Because very *few* customers know or care. (The symptom that's
most visible is that M$ word will read many B&W TIFF's as W&B, i.e., will
invert the pixels.) They admit they don't support it; they don't
care.
By contrast, netpbm has better TIFF support than most of the commercial
programs I've seen. Why? Because they'd rather use a free TIFF library than
a buggy proprietary one.
>Programming tools is a special case within this, since programmers
>often program them for themselves, so they're of the highest quality.
>Free user-level applications, on the other hand, are usually far
>inferior to commercial ones.
I'm not sure I know what you mean by a user-level application. Certainly,
free software as a whole includes fewer end-user applications, precisely
because the people who are likely to write it don't generally need them very
often.
However, as the industry matures, this does show signs of changing.
Compression is a user-level function, and I think gzip is at least as good
as just about any commercial compression utility I've seen.
-s
--
Copyright 1997 Peter Seebach - seebs at solon.com - C/Unix Wizard
I am not actually gladys@nancynet.com but junk mail is accepted there.
The *other* C FAQ, the hacker FAQ, et al. http://www.solon.com/~seebs
Unsolicited email (junk mail and ads) is unwelcome, and will be billed for.
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Date: 12 Apr 1997 05:09:50 GMT
From: hclsmith@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith)
Subject: Re: Unix and ease of use (WAS: Who makes more ...)
Message-Id: <5in5eu$d8t@news.istar.ca>
In article <01bc46b7$6f4ce0c0$87ee6fce@timpent.a-sis.com>, tim@a-sis.com
says...
>
>Martin Sohnius x24031 <msohnius@novell.co.uk> wrote in article
>> Is it really the
>> purpose of society to make everyone work harder? Or rather to provide
>> a worthwhile and happy life?
>
>And what makes you think that "hard work" and a "worthwhile and
>happy life" are unrelated? Hard work is what *makes* life
>worthwhile.
then the Slaves must've been the happiest people on earth.
i don't think that's what he was saying, either. my question is, should
society try to provide a worthwhile and happy life; or should it pit
individuals against each other in such a way that each works increasingly
hard for non-proportionate compensation.
should fewer and fewer people be working, while those with jobs each do
more and more, with raises far behind inflation if there are raises at all,
wondering each night when they go home if there'll be a job in the morning,
wondering if the increasing tax grabs are going to leave anything to put
aside for retirement, wondering if what little can be put aside will be
worth anything when it's needed (especially the chunk the gov't takes for
pensions)... etc etc etc
so, let's try answering the question again - but not in comp.lang.tcl, if you
please.
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Date: Sat, 12 Apr 1997 00:45:15 -0400
From: Michael <omc@worldnet.att.net>
Subject: url_get Question
Message-Id: <334F135B.7EE1@worldnet.att.net>
Whenever I try to execute url_get.pl from the command line I get this
error:
Final $ should be \$ or $name at ./url_get.pl line 103, within string
syntax error at ./url_get.pl line 103, near "? "$selector\t$search\t$""
Execution of ./url_get.pl aborted due to compilation errors.
Can anyone please tell me what I am doing wrong? I want to call a gopher
server and convert the results to a html page. Thank you in advance for
your replies.
Regards,
Michael
P.S. If you can answer via e-mail that would be great. My address is
omc@worldnet.att.net
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Date: 8 Mar 97 21:33:47 GMT (Last modified)
From: Perl-Request@ruby.oce.orst.edu (Perl-Users-Digest Admin)
Subject: Digest Administrivia (Last modified: 8 Mar 97)
Message-Id: <null>
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End of Perl-Users Digest V8 Issue 286
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