Re: [tlug] bash question

[Matt Doughty <wyndigo@example.com>]

On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 10:43:15AM +0900, Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote:
> Josh Glover wrote:
> >
> >Sorry to say this, JC, but this is a severe case of lack-of-RTFMing-before-
> >posting.
> 
> No, it was not for lack of RTFM'ing. I was for lack of spotting the 
> semi-colon. What kind of a programming language makes if a separate 
> statement from the then part?
> 
> Seriously, I did RTFM and Google and even have a great book on shell 
> scripting. I just don't *do* shell scripting and figured my problem was 
> in how I was using the comparison operator.

Then you really have no excuse. Certainly if you have a book on shell
scripting you could find an if statement to compare against. Here
is the first example from the bash manual:

       if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then . "$BASH_ENV"; fi

and, going back to your original code I believe you used > for a
comparison operator.  Did you find that in the manual also?
No you didn't, you guessed.  You guessed without really reading
the man page, and when that guess didn't work you came running
here for help.  Your patterns never change.

> >Please do your homework in the future.
> 
> Not start a flame war, but didn't we just get a sed question that was 
> answered by many people with many different solution with nobody saying 
> "man sed or do some Googling".

Yeah, you know why? Because intuitively you expect sed to be the right
tool for the job, but it wasn't, and that is largely due to sed's 
brain dammaged approach to newlines.  A google wasn't going to find
him, and answer.  The question he asked was very much a fringe question,
and you have to look no further than my twisted solution, the only one
that actually used sed, to see that the problem exactly easy to figure
out.

> 
> <rant>
> I've gotten used to the level of bitterness on this list so I *do* 
> research my own questions before I post. Trust me, tlug is not the first 
> thing I try.
> 
> Some people find some the answers to some questions posted just *so* 
> obvious that they assume the poster didn't do any research on his own. 
> Just because the answer is obvious to someone doesn't mean it was 
> obvious to the poster. Of course the answer is obvious the expert ... 
> but not to the newbie.
> 
> Some people just get some parts (or maybe all) parts of Linux and don't 
> quite get some (or none) of the other parts. For all we know I could be 
> the world's greatest Lisp programmer but just not be able to write a 
> single line of bash script because I just can't get the language. (Not 
> that I was ever very good at Lisp either ;)
> 
> This was not directed at Josh; I just wanted to point out that there is 
> no correlation with how easy the answer to a question appears to you and 
> the amount of work the person who posted the question put into finding 
> the answer on his own.
> </rant>
> 

It has nothing to do with how easy the solution is.  It is how easy
the solution is to find. Your problems often have solutions that
are very easy to find, that is why you get so much heat. Yes, there
was a time when I have never touched shell programming.  My first
few stabs at an if statement went sideways, and I was forced to 
actually sit down and RTFM.  It took a couple minutes to find the
solution then.  I don't care about how hard or difficult the subject
matter is.  I don't care if the solution is obvious to me or not.  I
do care whether the solution is easy to find if you apply yourself
for just a few minutes.

Your cross cable question was perfectly reasonable. The answer was
obvious to me, but I could see how searching a bit would leave you
without a clear answer. I don't have a problem with that.  The bash
question was obvious also, but I know if you really looked you would
have figured that out on your own. So I am left with two choices:
a. I assume you are an idiot who can't tie his shoes without someone
   holding your hand.

b. I assume that when the answer doesn't immediately present itself
   you get lazy, and post to the list.

I assume you would rather I assume the latter.

--Matt