Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by harrytuttle 4677 days ago
No but allowing leading and trailing spaces is not user stupidity. That is design stupidity.

You know like recording numbers as string in the format: "0000000000000000000000000123.23210000000000000"
2 comments
icebraining 4677 days ago
The shell by default ignores spaces, you have to specifically force it to acknowledge them by enclosing the name in quotation marks or escaping with a backslash. In that situation, a command line tool should do what it's told, not disobey a direct command. Leave the rubber padded tools for the GUI land.
link
harrytuttle 4677 days ago
Rubber padded I do not expect. Retarded I also do not expect.

Explain the validity of:

   mkdir " "
   mkdir "  "
   mkdir "   "
?

It at least violates the principle of least surprise

link
icebraining 4677 days ago
Validity? It's a string like any other. It's not mkdir's job to second-guess what I tell it to do.

And I don't see how it violated such principle. You tell it to create a file with spaces - you even emphasized them with quotes -, and you're surprise it did so?

link
harrytuttle 4676 days ago
It is merely an illustration. The reality is stuff like that occasionally does happen when you use variables and parse results from other commands.
link
phaemon 4677 days ago
No it's not. If you type

    mkdir ..<space>
it tells you "cannot create directory". You have to explicitly tell it you want a space in by using quotes (as you well know).

Oh, and it's my computer. I don't want my shell telling me what I'm "allowed" to do. If I explicitly tell it to do something, it should damn well do it!

link
harrytuttle 4676 days ago
What if you do the following?

    VARX=".. " # by accident as the result of a command
    mkdir $VARX
link