Hi onf, At 2025-02-16T03:50:30+0100, onf wrote: > On Sun Feb 16, 2025 at 3:17 AM CET, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > At 2025-02-16T02:44:12+0100, onf wrote: > > > Seems like you found yourself in a familiar situation: > > > "This under-documented code seems stupid. Was the person who > > > wrote it really that stupid, or am I missing something?" > > > > Predictably, I would not be as hard on myself as you are on me. > > > > I didn't think the original code was "stupid", merely mistaken in > > special character selection with respect to getting the desired > > quotes, > > [...] > > Seems like you are assuming bad faith where there is none. I was not > trying to characterize your train of thought.
With the quotation marks, it seemed to lie toward the "mind-reading" end of the speculative continuum. > I was just light-heartedly paraphrasing what I tend to think in > similar situations when I am not sure if something is deliberate or a > mistake on the author's part. And likewise, I was light-heartedly suggesting you were being heavy-handed. ;-) > > > Experience has taught me to approach seemingly non-sensical code > > > with caution. > > > > Contrastingly, experience has taught me to test examples before > > sticking them into a man page, and to test the ones that are already > > there by copy-and-pasting them, before assuming they're correct. > > This recourse might have been thought unnecessary by the drafters of > > the GNU pic(1) page[.] > > I don't think that's in contradiction with what I wrote. I agree. I think the hazards are distinct and distinguishable, and both better avoided. > I get that you're trying to say you had reason to believe the authors > made a mistake and didn't notice it because they haven't checked how > it renders, though. The good news is, we'll have a better example now, thanks to Sebastian. > > [The GNU pic(1) page unfortunately is one of our "diff" pages (like > > eqn(1)) that documents only GNU extensions to AT&T pic (relative to > > Eighth Edition Unix pic, I think), and presumes that the reader is > > already a sophisticated pic user. > > Yeah; I usually turn to "Making Pictures With GNU PIC" by Eric S. > Raymond instead. You might also be interested in Kernighan's pic(1) whitepaper from Tenth Edition Research Unix. I'm attaching a copy. I invite anyone reading to compare its contents with Eric's document. > (Great! Mind telling me what those AT&T ones do??)[1] It's on my to-do list. The exercise will make me a better eqn(1) user. Regards, Branden
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