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by liability 2501 days ago
Right, the only true Unix philosophy which ever described reality was "worse is better."

Just look at the GNU coding guidelines, it explicitly mentions that GNU tools are not to use static buffers and silently truncate long lines. Why? Because that's what proprietary Unix implementations were doing at the time! Silent truncation of long input lines! Is that "doing one thing and doing it well" (DOTADIW)? Hell no!

DOTADIW is an ahistorical description of Unix. A humble-brag with little basis in reality.
2 comments
tempguy9999 2501 days ago
As I'm new to this could you give a reference to those very gnu guidelines so I could see for myself?

And also where those guidelines say that silent truncation of long lines should occur?

thanks

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liability 2501 days ago
Sure, no problem:

>"Avoid arbitrary limits on the length or number of any data structure, including file names, lines, files, and symbols, by allocating all data structures dynamically. In most Unix utilities, “long lines are silently truncated”. This is not acceptable in a GNU utility."

https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Semantics

So perhaps DOTADIW is a GNU philosophy, because it's one of the reasons GNU became so popular. Proprietary unix tools often did one thing and did it poorly, making GNU tools a breath of fresh air.

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teddyh 2501 days ago
https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Semantics

I think you misinterpreted parent’s statement, though, and/or they mistyped. The GNU Coding Standards says to not use static buffers, nor should GNU programs silently truncate long lines.

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someguydave 2499 days ago
Not to mention the mess with glibc and their war against anyone who wants to do static linking. There's a long history of user-hostile behavior on various commercial and open-source Unices, usually to serve some outside agenda.
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