The worst error message in history belongs to... BIND9!

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Bill Campbell
> Sent: Tuesday, July 03, 2007 9:36 AM
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: The worst error message in history belongs to... BIND9!
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jul 03, 2007, Martin McCormick wrote:
> >Paul Chvostek writes:
> >> This is actually just the difference between sh and bash.  You'll see
> >> the latter error if you type `a = 5` in bash in any OS.  It just so
> >> happens that most Linux distributions don't have a real sh:
> >
> >	I kind of thought that was the real issue. While
> >something like this is maybe slightly annoying at times, the
> >differences in, say, arithmetic handling and loops can sometimes
> >mean rewriting parts of shell scripts depending on whether it is
> >going to run in BSD or Linux.
> 
> That's a major argument for doing things in python or perl as
> they are consistent across all platforms.  While perl has a well
> deserved reputation for looking like modem noise, it's certainly
> no worse than shell scripts.

Actually perl has a lot of problems too.  One of the biggest is that
perl script writers always seem to think like you, in that perl is
consistent across all platforms.

The biggest problems I've seen with perl scripts are when people use
perl extensions that are not on the system.  You then have to go find
the extension they use and very few of the perl script writers seem
to be smart enough to put a section at the beginning of their scripts
that define the CPAN location of the particular extensions they are
using.  The second biggest problem is perl script writers using
constructs that are valid in Perl 5.6 and later but not valid in
Perl 5.0   I don't know how many times I've wanted to strangle
someone when trying to run a perl script under Perl 5.0 that had
ONE single friggin statement in the entire thousand line script that
isn't valid under 5.0 but is under 5.6  And I've also run across
a number of Perl extensions that won't run under 5.0 as well, even
though the authors are supposed to regression test under 5.0

> 
> Pure /bin/sh is very limited in its constructs compared to other
> shells such as ksh, bash, etc.
> 

ksh is consistent across platfroms, of course, you generally have to
compile it for the system your on.

If you cannot work within a limited construct set your not much of a
programmer.

Ted