Re: Is it worth reporting a bug just for that ?

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

On Mon, 28 Jun 1999, Thierry Laronde wrote:

> Le Mon, Jun 28, 1999 at 12:13:06PM +0200, Goswin Brederlow écrivit:
> [Just to close the thread that my initial shortsighted point of vue beg an]
> > : prog spam_spam_spam
> > or just
> > : prog
> > 
> > should give a short summary of the useage of "prog", not more than 20
> > lines I would say.
> > 
> > : prog --help
> > 
> > can scroll on forever, but not on stderr
> > 
> > Eveything else I fill a wishlist bug against if I'm in the mood of
> > filling bugs.
> 
> Wichert Akkerman's answer reminded me this evidence : we don't talk about "programs" but about "programs in an Unix environ ment". This means :
> 1°) A program is not only invoked by the "end user" from the prompt, but used in combination with other ones via pipes ;
> 2°) So the programs must behave intelligently, taking the input via 0, sending the RESULT ( what the program is actually designed for) via 1, and sending meta-informations ( comments for debugging etc...) via 2.
> 
> So, indeed :
> 1°) If the program isn't invoked cleanly, it has no RESULT to send via 1, but must complain via 2  ( and yes the message have to be short, just giving the "entry point" to know how to get more informations);
> 2°) If the program is invoked via the "egotistical" option ( say, --help), one asks it "please, talk about yourself". This is the RESULT, what it's invoked for ;  so => SDTOUT.
> 3°) It the program is invoked via the "schizophrenic" option ( say, --verbose), one asks "do what you have to do, and please look at yourself and comment". The RESULT => STDOUT, and the comments ( meta-informations ) => STDERR.
> 
> In practice, we don't always think about that ( see, for example, sgmltool : the man page says : invoke it without argument to have the help ; and the result, with the error, is sent via STDOUT ...).
> 
> As an exercise, the reader can now think about the following problem :
> 
> Write a program that talks about itself and, if it is invoked cleanly, exit with an error and send the message :"I made an error".
> Let's call it : TheLiar.
> 
> Question : according to the above policy, where must be sent the message ? :-)

/dev/null

;-)

Dwarf
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