HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: axi0349@ultb.isc.rit.edu (A.X. Ivasyuk)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD?
Originator: axi0349@ultb
Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 11:48:58 GMT


Paul Prescod writes:
>If something can be made simple or powerful, it should be made simple,
>for simple users, and powerful for powerful users.  There is no reason
>the same thing can't be done in two (three, four, five) different ways.
>Installation can be simple for those with simple needs, and highly
>configurable for those with complex needs.  There is no conflict
>there.

Pardon me, but weren't you just complaining that something should be
done in a consistent way?

-Anatoly
-- 
  Anatoly Ivasyuk @ Computer Science House @ Rochester Institute of Technology
   anatoly@nick.csh.rit.edu || axi0349@ultb.rit.edu || axi0349@ritvax.rit.edu

                  You say you haven't heard of CSH?  You will...
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.sys.hp
From: pld@fc.hp.com (Paul_Dineen)
Subject: Re: lib77 "flush" call. Where is it in UNIX?
Organization: HP CLO/CoLL, Fort Collins, CO
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.4 PL6]
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 23:31:11 GMT

: You can write a "flush" that calls "fflush" (which is a standard C
: routine, and you should have a man page for it). You will need to use the
: HP-UX 'fstream' routine to map the FORTRAN unit number to a C stream number.

  Note that 'fstream' is a FORTRAN routine, rather than an HP-UX routine.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,alt.cobol,alt.folklore.computers,alt.religion.computers,comp.lang.pascal
From: peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: net.views - mainframe programmers in an open systems world
Organization: NeoSoft Communications Services -- (713) 684-5900
Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1992 13:10:26 GMT

In article <1992Nov4.173720.22157@tandem.com> Don Nelson <nelson_don@comm.tandem.com> writes:
> I'm having a little trouble understanding the question.  Perhaps you 
> could explain in 25 words or less why mainframe programmers differ from 
> programmers in "the open world" (which is definitely not as open as some 
> people think).

Mainframe programmers are used to working in sweatshop conditions, and will
eat the lunch of us little hothouse roses unless we quit playing around on
netnews and start taking end-users seriously.

Seriously.
-- 
Peter da Silva.  <peter@sugar.neosoft.com>.
 `-_-'   "Meglelted mr ma a farkasodat ?"
  'U`    "Zure otsoa besarkatu al duzu gaur?"
Das kann nicht mein Zimmer sein, denn ich atme kein Ammoniak.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: bill@bilver.uucp (Bill Vermillion)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD? (long)
Organization: W. J. Vermillion - Winter Park, FL
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:04:51 GMT

In article <BxKMo9.3HI@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu> papresco@napier.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>>>Why doesn't VI use the jkl; keys for cursor movement, since your fingers

>>Yes - I noticed that you let the words continue on a very long line.
>>But since vi needs to be a program editor too, there are options of
>>continuing long lines, or to have them wrap just like vi is doing for
>>me right now.   set wrapmargin=5 will do nicely.

>Does VI need to be program editor when I'm in RN?  Surely RN could set
>VI to word wrap mode, as I am certain they work together often.

Unix is customizable for what you want.  If your main use is in a news
reader just set a file .exrc to contain the lines you need.   Mine
defaults to numbering the lines and wrapping when I am in trn (haven't
used RN for years)     

Mine looks like this.  (Ignore the first two lines.)

map  ^i/* A */^
map  :1,$s/^M$//
set wrapmargin=9
set nu nomesg autoindent
ab sss :ws

That way it autmatically wraps when it is 9 characters from the end,
comes up in line number mode.  WIll stay indented until I press CTRL-D
if I indent, and turns off messages to me while in vi.

If I type 3's in a row it will automatically save the file.  (I
couldn't think of any words that has s three times, so I figured that
one was safe).

Customize it the way you want.  You can set EXINIT in your environment.

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bill@bilver.oau.org  bill.vermillion@oau.org
                - bill@bilver.uucp 
                - ..!{peora|tous|tarpit}!bilver!bill
From: ioi@pixmap.seas.upenn.edu (Ioi Kim Lam)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: RE: IS UNIX DEAD
Date: 18 Nov 92 20:17:02 GMT
Organization: University of Pennsylvania


Brian K. Talley
> 
> 
> >> Total B.S.!!    I'd love to have a user friendly application and VI
> >>is it for me. It grips me to hear DOS users say "VI it's to hard to
> >>learn". Come on thats why UNIX has got power, DOS doesn't......
> >
> >If you think that being hard to use means power, go and write a book about
> >it. I am sure that would be a best seller. 
> 
> I believe what Mr. McCullough was saying, although it was poorly worded, is
> that many Unix applications require a little more effort on the part of the
> user to learn all the features an application has to offer, as opposed to
> DOS, which has little to offer in comparison (apples VS. oranges).
> 

	I see your point. I agree that currently many powerful
applications are hard to use, but that is due to their poor design. I hope
you would understand that a lot of "powerful applications" you have
mentioned (in your previous postings) were made more than a decade ago.
The user interface technology has developed so much since the beginning of
the 80's and a lot of the features in the older applications can be and
have been incorporate into the new GUI. 

	Of course, I agree that the current GUI technology has its
downsides. It is still in its infancy. I think what we should do is trying
to improve it, not clinging to the old methods. 

	I believe what the programmer should do is to deliver the power of
the computer to every user, regardless to their knowledge in computing.
How good is a powerful application that no one can use?

	Let us look at the impossibility. Our ancestors have conquered
many impossibilities. They may laugh at us if we now say "it is just
*impossible* to make a powerful application easy to learn and easy to use".
I would always acknowledge the difficulty, but not the impossibility.

	If a user finds an application too difficult to use, that is not
his fault. That is the designer's fault. And believe me, we can correct
it.

Sincerely,

	Ioi.

========================================      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
IOI LAM ( footnote : the Binary Man )  |      |  ( . )    ( . )   |  
---------------------------------------|     [  #       V          ]
Box 0157, 3820 Locust Walk             |      |      [+++++]      |
Philadelphia, PA 19103-6134            |      |___________________|
---------------------------------------|       _|_______________|__
ioi@eniac.seas.upenn.edu               |  =>--|        101         |--<=
_______________________________________|      |____________________|
                                               _|_             _|_ 

Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: papresco@undergrad.math.waterloo.edu (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD? (long)
Keywords: n
Organization: University of Waterloo
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 01:32:12 GMT

>and will probably miss the end:
>
>I disagree.  Not having used too many OS's, I can only recall 2 
>that the help command did something.  Vax VMS, and Microsoft Dos 5.
>I take that back, i just thought of Wylbur/MVSX, and VM/CMS.  I believe
>help does something on those systems.  

Add in OS/2 and (I believe) AmigaDOS.  Plus many, many, many, command 
line oriented programs that are not operating systems like symbolic
math packages and graphing packages.  Plus every text mode adventure
game.	
>
>Why should help do something at the command prompt?  I would much, much
>rather have the hardcopy manual in my hand.  While online help might
>be nice, I really just do not see its absence as an inherent flaw.

You think the average university should issue everyone textual manuals?

Especially for the huge mass of files that come with Unix???

And what about when those files change?
Xref: sparky comp.unix.questions:13518 alt.folklore.computers:16338
From: lowen@lorc.UUCP (Lamar Owen)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Whence Unix? (was Re: IS UNIX DEAD?) (New Thread?)
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 92 10:57:21 -0500
Organization: LORC Enterprises

In <STEVEV.92Nov13100727@miser.uoregon.edu> stevev@miser.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender) writes:
>In article <1dvltdINN6i4@skat.usc.edu> jlowrey@skat.usc.edu (John 'Fritz' Lowrey) writes:


>	   My seed:
>	   Microsoft DOS	->	Intended as a stepping stone while DR 
>				   wrapped up CP/M-86, and now the program
>				   loader of choice for countless millions. 

>You really need to study up on your computing history.  You seem
>to imply that Microsoft got MS-DOS from Digital Research.
>Microsoft got MS-DOS from a small firm called Seattle Computer,
>which had written a quick-and-dirty CP/M clone called SC-DOS.
>Then Microsoft hacked it up and marketed the hell out of it.

The original marketing niche for MS-DOS was as a stepping stone from the
8-bit CP/M world to the multiuser 16-bit world of Xenix.  Microsoft, in
the early 80's, fully intended to make Xenix their high-end OS.  However,
the market chose otherwise.


>Steve VanDevender 	

-- 
--

Lamar Owen, Systems Consultant, GE Lighting Systems, Hendersonville, NC
***********************************************************************
 Opinions expressed herein are the author's and do not reflect policy
   or opinions of the General Electric Company or its subsidiaries.
***********************************************************************
Xref: sparky comp.unix.questions:13853 comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit:505
From: mbarkah@slate.mines.colorado.edu (Ade Barkah)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Subject: Re: need to make a program dump core on a signal
Date: 23 Nov 92 18:13:02 GMT
Followup-To: comp.unix.pc-clone.32bit
Organization: Colorado School of Mines

pizzi@nervous.com (Riccardo Pizzi) writes:
: I'm trying to make a program dump core upon reception of SIGUSR1

: Unfortunately, the abort(3) call doesn't seem to work.
: Yes, I verified that:
: 1) the current working dir is writable
: 2) uid and euid of the program are the same
: 3) there is no shell-imposed coresize limit
: Still the abort() call doesn't create a core dump.
: 
: Is there another way to make a program dump core?

You also need to check if the kernel parameters allow core dumps.
In svr4 this would be the S/HCORLIM setting. A SCORLIM setting of 0
prevents the creation of core dumps.

Otherwise, you may need to manually cause a dump. Replace abort()
with a delayer, and you can come along and issue a kill -x statement
to the process, where x being any one of those signals which
causes core to be dumped (SIGILL or SIGSEGV or something.)
Your system or compiler or shell might be trapping or ignoring
SIGABRT. (Or, you can use signal/raise to simulate the other 
core-dumping signals.)

-Regards,

-Ade.
-- 
Internet  : mbarkah@slate.mines.colorado.edu    (NeXT Mailable)
CompuServe: 74160,3404
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: a1001032@cdf.toronto.edu (Fiona Wong)
Subject: popen..
Originator: a1001032@eddie.cdf.toronto.edu
Organization: University of Toronto Computing Disciplines Facility
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 19:31:40 GMT

Hi,netters:

If a command yields nothing on stdout, what will popen(command,"r") point to?
How can I distinguish between pointing something and nothing?

---
Fiona.
-- 
This is the story of bee.		Whose sex is very hard to see.
You cannot tell the he from the she.	But she can tell, and so can he.
The little bee is never still.		She has no time to take the pill.
And that is why, in times like these.	There are so many sons of bees.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: lhjensen@fish.Princeton.EDU (Leif Jensen)
Subject: Re: How do I get a particualr line of a file?
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 01:09:21 GMT

In article <pec2.722467852@Isis.MsState.Edu> pec2@ra.msstate.edu (Paul E. Carroll) writes:
>This seems extremely simple, but I've run into the problem several times
>and gotten stumped each time.  So how do I view a particualr line of a 
>file?  Head looks at the top, tail the end, cat - echo - more - or less-
>look at the whole thing... but what if I want to see just line 30?
>or JUST line 210?  I'm stumped.

There are lots of ways to do this.  Some are better than others.  Since
there are so many correct answers, I think that for efficiency's sake, 
it is important to use a method that does not read more of the file
than it has to. Here's a short list.

sed -n '200{;p;q;}' /etc/termcap
awk 'NR==200 {print;exit}' /etc/termcap
sed 200q /etc/termcap | tail -1
head -200 /etc/termcap | tail -1
perl -ne 'if ($. == 200) {print; exit}' /etc/termcap

In article <1ep3j0INNnvk@clover.csv.warwick.ac.uk> maupb@csv.warwick.ac.uk (Mr J L Saunders) writes:
>Have a look at the manual for awk...
>
>awk '{if (NR == line) print}' line=linenumber filename
>
>Where linenumber is the line you want, and filename is the file you're looking
>at. eg. 
>
>>awk '{if (NR == line) print}' line=5000 /usr/dict/words
>concrete

I don't know why you would use the if(...) method to choose the line.
The awk command I list above seems much more intuitive.  Your solution
also suffers from reading much more of the file than it has to.  Even
on a fast sun workstation with no other users, the effect is dramatic:

% ls -l /tmp/foo
-rw-------  1 lhjensen  3138380 Nov 22 19:46 /tmp/foo
% time awk '{if (NR == line) print}' line=200 /tmp/foo
hn|2621-nl|hp2621nl|2621nl|hp2621-nl|hp 2621 with no labels:\
22.810u 0.780s 0:23.72 99.4% 0+162k 0+0io 0pf+0w
%

In article <1992Nov22.235943.13501@umbc3.umbc.edu> rouben@math9.math.umbc.edu (Rouben Rostamian) writes:
>To print line 30:
>sed -n 30p filename
>
>To print lines 30 to 35:
>sed -n 30,35p filename

Ditto for this command.  The relevant times are

% time sed -n 200p /tmp/foo
hn|2621-nl|hp2621nl|2621nl|hp2621-nl|hp 2621 with no labels:\
2.810u 1.070s 0:03.96 97.9% 0+114k 0+0io 0pf+0w
%

which isn't bad, but is much worse than it has to be.

In summary, there's much more to things than just finding a solution
that works.  Try to find one that works well before you post it.

--
Leif Jensen
lhjensen@phoenix.princeton.edu
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg)
Subject: Re: What full-screen file managers are there?
Organization: The College On The Other Side Of Route One
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 22:36:05 GMT

In article <MANDEL.92Nov17100041@litp4.ibp.fr> mandel@litp.ibp.fr (Arnaldo MANDEL) writes:
=In article <1992Nov16.223340.15353@mccc.edu> pjh@mccc.edu (Pete Holsberg) writes:
=> I prefer HDSCAN.
=
=Better go all the way and get emacs, with tree-dired.  You not only get all
=funtions most file managers execute, but you can add some of your own.  And
=then, this would be just the beginning of using emacs for almost everything,
=instead of hundreds of little frozen utilities.

I tried emacs. It makes my 386/33 crawl.
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD?
Organization: Elitist Usenet Administrators, Stuff & Nonsense Division
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1992 02:31:02 GMT

In article <1992Nov22.151943.1100@global.hacktic.nl> peter@global.hacktic.nl (Peter Busser) writes:

>twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce) writes:
>
>>The fact that some
>>operating systems install easily doesn't mean that they all can or
>>should.
>
>Why can one system be easy while another can't?

Good Lord.

>I don't see a reason (mind you,
>we're talking about low-end systems targeted for the user market).

Then why is "Unix" in the subject line of this message?

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / 
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /               Rocks say goodbye.
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /
From: JLS2013%TNTECH.bitnet@cunyvm.cuny.edu (Joel L. Seber ... CH210)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Playing CD in workstation A, hearing it in B, Can I?
Date: 21 Nov 92 16:28:30 GMT

Whoops!  Sorry about the other message, which is an echo of the original!  I
screwed up!  No flames, please; it went out before I could stop it.

This is my REAL reply.

Thanks, -jls
>
>From: Eduardo Rodriguez <erodrigu@dcc.uchile.cl>
>Date: 8 Sep 92 19:27:47 GMT
>Sender: Network News <usenet@dcc.uchile.cl>
>Originator: erodrigu@tolten
>To:       info-unix@sem.brl.mil
>
>
>In article <Bu9pL1.2M6@news.cso.uiuc.edu>, berger@atropa (Mike Berger) writes:
>> This is true, but it's only one possible approach.  You can play the
>> CD, take the audio from the headphone jack and connect it to the audio
>> in on the sparc, digitize it, and send it to another machine over the
>> network.  Assuming its a novelty and not a serious need to get digital
>> accuracy for playing a CD over the network, that might be acceptable.
>
>Is there anybody that did that?. Somebody here told me that this
>can be dangerous (the audio in the sparc can result damaged, due to
>the output level is very high), any comments?, do I need some
>device special between the output and input audio devices?
>
>edo...
>
>Eduardo Rodriguez S        - --- - --- - --- -    erodrigu@dcc.uchile.cl
>Dpto de Ciencias de la Computacion  - --- -    ...!uunet!uchdcc!erodrigu
>Universidad de Chile   --- - --- - ---   erodrigu%uchdcc@uchcecvm.BITNET
>- --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - --- - ---
>

I do it all the time on my Sparcstation network using 'radio'.  I just feed
the output of the CD player through the headphone jack AT LOW LEVELS (adjust
the volume dial on the front of a Sun CD player), adjust the volume using
gaintool on the system connected to the player, then let it go to the net.
I notice only a small amount of traffic increase when using 'radio'.  Hasn't
damaged anything yet, either.  Just be careful.

If you don't have Sparcstations, I don't know if this will work or not.

Hope this helps,


Joel L. Seber                           | Dry humor is wasted around here.
SUN Workstation Laboratory Manager      |
Center for Manufacturing Research       |                 -Joel L. Seber
      and Technology Utilization        |
Tennessee Technological University      | recursive, adj.
Cookeville, TN  38505                   |     See 'recursive'
                                        |
jls2013@tntech.edu                      |

Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: shiva@vela.acs.oakland.edu (SHIVAKUMAR C. BETTADAPURA)
Subject: File pointer misaligned if opened in append mode.
Organization: Oakland University, Rochester MI.
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 22:41:17 GMT

I work in an ULTRIX environment. When a file is opened in append mode, the
file pointer does not position itself at the end of file; if only 
system calls are used. How ever, with standard library results are as 
expected. 

Source code for both the versions are given below:

/* This version uses the standard library */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

main()
{
  FILE * fp;
  if ((fp = fopen("junk","a")) == NULL)
     { printf( "Create a file called junk  \n"); exit(0); }
  printf("The current fpos = %ld\n", ftell(fp));
  if(fwrite("junk",4, 1, fp) < 0) printf("error writing into file\n");
  printf("The current fpos after write = %ld\n", ftell(fp));
  fclose(fp);
}

/* This uses the unix system calls */

#include <stdio.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

main()
{
  int  fp;
     if((fp = open("junk", O_WRONLY|O_APPEND)) < 0)
       {
	printf("Error writing into file\n");
	exit(0);
       }
  printf("The current fpos = %ld\n", tell(fp));
  if(write(fp,"junk",4) < 0) printf("error writing into file\n");
  printf("The current fposafter write = %ld\n", tell(fp));
  close(fp);
}

Reply to:
shiva@vela.acs.oakland.edu

-- 
shiva
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shivakumar C. Bettadapura		E-mail : shiva@vela.acs.oakland.edu
System Programer			Office Phone # : (313) 370 - HELP
From: peter@global.hacktic.nl (Peter Busser)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: IS UNIX DEAD (long)
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1992 12:52:05 GMT
Organization: Global Village 1

rm72@prism.gatech.EDU (Robert B. McCullough) writes:

>It grips me to hear DOS users say "VI it's to hard to learn".

I'm not a DOS user, I'm using Linux right now. And I still think vi is hard to
learn.

>Come on thats why UNIX has got power, DOS doesn't.

WHAT? UNIX has got power because it is harder to learn? That's even a weaker
argument than saying that it wasn't meant for 'stupid' users.

>MY opinion like or not--DOS BLOWS!! Girlie OS.

I agree.

>Flame me, cry, whine I don't care.

>Wasn't the Byte article talking about NT anyways?
Really?

Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: ft@cbnewsi.cb.att.com (frederick.d.true)
Subject: Unlocking named pipes
Organization: AT&T
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 06:11:16 GMT
Followup-To: ftrue@attmail.att.com
Keywords: named pipe 

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what's wrong with the
following usage of named pipes. I have 12 large compressed files which
I would like to merge/sort (they are sorted) without having to
decompress all of them before merging. So, I've written a simple script
to create 12 named pipes with mknod, say pipe1..pipe12. I begin
background processes to zcat each of the 12 files to one of the pipes
in sequence. I then start 'sort <switches> -m pipe1 .. pipe12 | <stuff> >
outputfile'.

Things go fine for a while, then the entire process freezes. The
output stream stops, and all processes go into IW wait, as if waiting
for something to happen. While in deadlock, if I try to read any of
the pipes, they each have data waiting, so all seems to be fine. So
who stopped everything and why?

Sort is able to merge at most 16 files at once, so I don't think
there's anything wrong there. Is there another anomoly in sort that
might cause this failure?

As best I can tell, sort found a depleted pipe that zcat couldn't keep
up with (perhaps sort is reading large buffers?), but no EOF, and
started sleeping. However, this isn't logical since the sort process
is followed by 3 other heavyweight processes in the pipe before the
output is written, so I would think that zcat could feed the pipes
fast enough. Besides, I thought processes would handle FIFO's normally
and sleep for at most a few seconds if it found and empty one before
hitting EOF.

By the way, in case it proves significant: I'm using SunOS 4.1.2 on a
SPARC. Standard sort, zcat, etc. Named pipes are created with mknod
-p. I've also tried sleeping for a few seconds before starting things,
with no results.

Can someone clear up the confusion, or at least add postulations to
the heap?

Please e-mail to ftrue@attmail.att.com or post here.

--
Fred True
AT&T

Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: tparker@music.scd.ucar.edu (Tom Parker)
Subject: Re: FTP question.
Organization: Scientific Computing Divison/NCAR Boulder, CO
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 16:36:03 GMT

In article <1992Nov18.003118.1@vmsb.is.csupomona.edu> cvadrayb@vmsb.is.csupomona.edu writes:
>Well, this is probably a stupid question, but I can't for the life of me
>figure out how to read (as in more or page) a remote file while using FTP.
>
>Please, can someone spare me my suffering?!?
>
>Kevin
>CVADRAYB@vmsb.is.csupomona.edu
>(Yeah, ok - So I use my VMS account as a mailbox - thats only because my
> UNIX account it full..)

It depends on your particular implementation of FTP, but this works for me:

      get remote.file "|more"
--
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Tom Parker             |  National Center for Atmospheric Research |
| tparker@ncar.ucar.edu  |  (303) 497-1227                           |
+--------------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
From: balden@dascohk.attmail.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Please stop your feed to us ASAP
Date: 23 Nov 92 15:58:46 GMT

Please stop your feed to johnnie@dascohk.attmail.com ASAP.
Besides Unix Digest (which is great, but we've had enough
for a while), we are getting a lot of error traffic.