The vi editor causes brain damage

The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

Let me give you and example of the difference between
Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
what it's like out here in the real world.

Go to a directory with 10k files and type:

rm *

What do you get?

/bin/rm: Argument list too long

If you map a network drive in DOS and type:

del *

It works.

That's the problem with the type of thinking in the
open source world. Why can DOS delete an infinite
number of files and rm can't? Because rm was written
using the "vi" editor and it causes brain damage and
that's why after 20 years rm hasn't caught up with
del.

Before everyone gets pissed off and freaks out why
don't you ponder the question why rm won't delete all
the files in the directory. If you can't grasp that
then you're brain damaged.

Think big people. Say NO to vi!


Marc Perkel
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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Al Viro]

On Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 10:20:34PM -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
> Let me give you and example of the difference between
> Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> what it's like out here in the real world.

[snip]

Marc, why don't you do the obvious thing and hire Jeff Merkey?
He used to work on netware kernel, you are a netware fanboy...
Hell, he might even share - his peyotl for whatever you are on;
it certainly has... intriguing effects, so who knows - maybe the
mix will give the right kind of out-of-box experience for you ;-)

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

--- Al Viro <viro@ftp.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> On Sat, Aug 18, 2007 at 10:20:34PM -0700, Marc
> Perkel wrote:
> > Let me give you and example of the difference
> between
> > Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> > what it's like out here in the real world.
> 
> [snip]
> 
> Marc, why don't you do the obvious thing and hire
> Jeff Merkey?
> He used to work on netware kernel, you are a netware
> fanboy...
> Hell, he might even share - his peyotl for whatever
> you are on;
> it certainly has... intriguing effects, so who knows
> - maybe the
> mix will give the right kind of out-of-box
> experience for you ;-)
> 

hmmmmm .....

So if you take Peyote then you think of things like
"rm *" should delete all the files in a folder and if
you're not on drugs then del from DOS being better
than rm in Linux is OK.

For what it's worth. I agree it seems to be that way.
I tried Peyote once about 25 years ago and it was
fantastic.


Marc Perkel
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http://www.junkemailfilter.com


       
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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[hotmetal]

On Sunday 19 August 2007, Marc Perkel wrote:
> > > Let me give you and example of 
<snip>
> > > brain damaged thinking
<snip>
> > > out here in the real world.

> I tried Peyote once about 25 years ago and it was
> fantastic.

Sounds like it hasn't worn off yet.

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

--- hotmetal@verizon.net wrote:

> On Sunday 19 August 2007, Marc Perkel wrote:
> > > > Let me give you and example of 
> <snip>
> > > > brain damaged thinking
> <snip>
> > > > out here in the real world.
> 
> > I tried Peyote once about 25 years ago and it was
> > fantastic.
> 
> Sounds like it hasn't worn off yet.

Afreed.


Marc Perkel
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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Jiri Slaby]

Marc Perkel napsal(a):
> Let me give you and example of the difference between
> Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> what it's like out here in the real world.
> 
> Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> 
> rm *
> 
> What do you get?
> 
> /bin/rm: Argument list too long

What does this have to do with rm command?

-- 
Jiri Slaby (jirislaby@gmail.com)
Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk University

[OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Willy Tarreau]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:15:22AM +0200, Jiri Slaby wrote:
> Marc Perkel napsal(a):
> > Let me give you and example of the difference between
> > Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> > what it's like out here in the real world.
> > 
> > Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> > 
> > rm *
> > 
> > What do you get?
> > 
> > /bin/rm: Argument list too long
> 
> What does this have to do with rm command?

Nothing, and no more with linux development. Marc confuses shell and rm.
Under DOS, when he types "del *", the shell calls the builtin function
"del" and passes it only one argument "*". The del function is then
responsible for iterating through the files using getfirst/getnext.

This is also why mostly only builtin shell commands support "*", while
most external commands do not support it, since they have to re-implement
the same code to iterate through the files (try "debug c*.com", it will
not work).

Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the 10000 file names to
the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because 10000 names in arguments
can require too much memory. That's why find and xargs were invented!

The solution is easy : find . -maxdepth 1 | xargs rm

So this has nothing to do with rm, nor with rm being open-source, and
even less with rm being written with vi, and Marc's rant is totally
wrong and off-topic. Maybe he was drunk when posting, or maybe someone
used his keyboard to make him look like a complete fool. Or maybe he
really is.

Willy
(please do not follow up on this OT thread, responses to /dev/null)

Re: [OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Benny Amorsen]

>>>>> "WT" == Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> writes:

WT> Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the 10000 file names
WT> to the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because 10000 names in
WT> arguments can require too much memory. That's why find and xargs
WT> were invented!

It would be very handy if the argument memory space was expanded.
Many years ago I hit the limit regularly on Solaris, and going to
Linux with its comparatively large limit was a joy. Now it happens to
me quite often on Linux as well.

What are the primary problems with expanding it? It used to be
swappable memory, is that still the case?


/Benny

Re: [OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Paolo Ornati]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 14:31:21 +0200
Benny Amorsen <benny+usenet@amorsen.dk> wrote:

> >>>>> "WT" == Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> writes:
> 
> WT> Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the 10000 file names
> WT> to the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because 10000 names in
> WT> arguments can require too much memory. That's why find and xargs
> WT> were invented!
> 
> It would be very handy if the argument memory space was expanded.
> Many years ago I hit the limit regularly on Solaris, and going to
> Linux with its comparatively large limit was a joy. Now it happens to
> me quite often on Linux as well.
> 

done  :)

commit b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba
Author: Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com>
Date:   Thu Jul 19 01:48:16 2007 -0700

    mm: variable length argument support

    Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by copying the strings
    directly from the old mm into the new mm.

-- 
	Paolo Ornati
	Linux 2.6.23-rc3-g2a677896 on x86_64

Re: variable length argument support (was: [OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage)

[Jan Engelhardt]

On Aug 19 2007 14:39, Paolo Ornati wrote:
>> WT> Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the 10000 file names
>> WT> to the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because 10000 names in
>> WT> arguments can require too much memory. That's why find and xargs
>> WT> were invented!
>> 
>> It would be very handy if the argument memory space was expanded.
>> Many years ago I hit the limit regularly on Solaris, and going to
>> Linux with its comparatively large limit was a joy. Now it happens to
>> me quite often on Linux as well.
>> 
>
>done  :)
>
>commit b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba
>Author: Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com>
>Date:   Thu Jul 19 01:48:16 2007 -0700
>
>    mm: variable length argument support
>
>    Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by copying the strings
>    directly from the old mm into the new mm.

Me wonders. Will that make the "checking for maximum length of command line
arguments" from autotools run forever since execve() will not fail anymore?



	Jan
-- 

Re: variable length argument support (was: [OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage)

[Paolo Ornati]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 15:07:01 +0200 (CEST)
Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de> wrote:

> >    Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by copying the strings
> >    directly from the old mm into the new mm.  
> 
> Me wonders. Will that make the "checking for maximum length of command line
> arguments" from autotools run forever since execve() will not fail anymore?

Since I'm running Gentoo and do many compiles I can tell that it
works  :)

If I remeber correctly it was discussed on LKML and turend out that
that check is done starting with a "max" len and going down rather than
starting low and going up.

-- 
	Paolo Ornati
	Linux 2.6.23-rc3-g2a677896-dirty on x86_64

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

--- Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> wrote:

> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:15:22AM +0200, Jiri Slaby
> wrote:
> > Marc Perkel napsal(a):
> > > Let me give you and example of the difference
> between
> > > Linux open source world brain damaged thinking
> and
> > > what it's like out here in the real world.
> > > 
> > > Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> > > 
> > > rm *
> > > 
> > > What do you get?
> > > 
> > > /bin/rm: Argument list too long
> > 
> > What does this have to do with rm command?
> 
> Nothing, and no more with linux development. Marc
> confuses shell and rm.
> Under DOS, when he types "del *", the shell calls
> the builtin function
> "del" and passes it only one argument "*". The del
> function is then
> responsible for iterating through the files using
> getfirst/getnext.
> 
> This is also why mostly only builtin shell commands
> support "*", while
> most external commands do not support it, since they
> have to re-implement
> the same code to iterate through the files (try
> "debug c*.com", it will
> not work).
> 
> Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the
> 10000 file names to
> the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because
> 10000 names in arguments
> can require too much memory. That's why find and
> xargs were invented!
> 
> The solution is easy : find . -maxdepth 1 | xargs rm
> 
> So this has nothing to do with rm, nor with rm being
> open-source, and
> even less with rm being written with vi, and Marc's
> rant is totally
> wrong and off-topic. Maybe he was drunk when
> posting, or maybe someone
> used his keyboard to make him look like a complete
> fool. Or maybe he
> really is.
> 
> Willy
> (please do not follow up on this OT thread,
> responses to /dev/null)
> 

The important point that you are missing here is that
the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.
This isn't about the rm command it's about programming
standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't
committed to getting it right.

Just like my thinking outside the box thread when I
try to say "this is broken" people don't go fix it.
Instead I get an explanation why Linux isn't capable
of having an rm command that will delete an unlimited
number of files.

I bet there are Microsoft people out there laughing at
this.

THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE !!!

20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions of
users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has a
problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux is a
cult.


Marc Perkel
Junk Email Filter dot com
http://www.junkemailfilter.com


       
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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Willy Tarreau]

On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 06:22:37AM -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
> The important point that you are missing here is that
> the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
> that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.

The important point you are missing is that it is not the rm command
which is broken. Either it's *all* commands or it's *your* way of
thinking how they should work.

I could play your game and say the "type" command is broken under
DOS. Why can't I do "type *" under DOS while I can do "cat *" under
linux ? For the exact same reason : the "*" is not processed at
the same place. Unix initially chose to process it in the caller,
and DOS later chose to process it in the callee. Neither is right,
neither is wrong, those are just two different approaches which may
be justified in their context. Having discovered DOS at 1.25 which
did not even support directories, I certainly can say that missing
globbing was not a problem at this time!

> This isn't about the rm command it's about programming
> standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't
> committed to getting it right.

It has nothing to do with programming standards, the rm command works
exactly like all others. Touch does the same, mv does the same, etc...
Educate yourself before stating idiocies like this !

> Just like my thinking outside the box thread when I
> try to say "this is broken" people don't go fix it.
> Instead I get an explanation why Linux isn't capable
> of having an rm command that will delete an unlimited
> number of files.

$ rm -rf $DIR will remove an unlimited number of files in this directory.

If you want to make a special case of "rm", then implement the special
case in the command and make it possible to pass it a globbing expression
just like you can do with find. But this will be useless.

> I bet there are Microsoft people out there laughing at
> this.

Oh yes, they are surely laughing at you, but at the same time they may
feel sad to be defended by people puting such stupid statements in public.

> THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE !!!
> 
> 20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions of
> users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has a
> problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux is a
> cult.

Yes, I really think you're the only one who has this problem. Don't you
think that among those tens of millions of users, none of them has ever
had to remove a directory full of files in 20 years ? Please stop taking
yourself for the center of the world and buy a "unix for newbies" book
instead of complaining the world is not like you would like it to be.

Willy

Re: Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Jose Celestino]

Words by Marc Perkel [Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 06:22:37AM -0700]:
> 
> --- Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:15:22AM +0200, Jiri Slaby
> > wrote:
> > > Marc Perkel napsal(a):
> > > > Let me give you and example of the difference
> > between
> > > > Linux open source world brain damaged thinking
> > and
> > > > what it's like out here in the real world.
> > > > 
> > > > Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> > > > 
> > > > rm *
> > > > 
> > > > What do you get?
> > > > 
> > > > /bin/rm: Argument list too long
> > > 
> > > What does this have to do with rm command?
> > 
> > Nothing, and no more with linux development. Marc
> > confuses shell and rm.
> > Under DOS, when he types "del *", the shell calls
> > the builtin function
> > "del" and passes it only one argument "*". The del
> > function is then
> > responsible for iterating through the files using
> > getfirst/getnext.
> > 
> > This is also why mostly only builtin shell commands
> > support "*", while
> > most external commands do not support it, since they
> > have to re-implement
> > the same code to iterate through the files (try
> > "debug c*.com", it will
> > not work).
> > 
> > Under unix, the shell resolves "*" and passes the
> > 10000 file names to
> > the "rm" command. Now, execve() may fail because
> > 10000 names in arguments
> > can require too much memory. That's why find and
> > xargs were invented!
> > 
> > The solution is easy : find . -maxdepth 1 | xargs rm
> > 
> > So this has nothing to do with rm, nor with rm being
> > open-source, and
> > even less with rm being written with vi, and Marc's
> > rant is totally
> > wrong and off-topic. Maybe he was drunk when
> > posting, or maybe someone
> > used his keyboard to make him look like a complete
> > fool. Or maybe he
> > really is.
> > 
> > Willy
> > (please do not follow up on this OT thread,
> > responses to /dev/null)
> > 
> 
> The important point that you are missing here is that
> the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
> that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.
> This isn't about the rm command it's about programming
> standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't
> committed to getting it right.
> 

Yuhu! The rm command isn't broken (nothing is broken related to this).
Have you been reading? Can you even (read)?

Fscking troll.

-- 
Jose Celestino
----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.msversus.org/     ; http://techp.org/petition/show/1
http://www.vinc17.org/noswpat.en.html
----------------------------------------------------------------
"And on the trillionth day, Man created Gods." -- Thomas D. Pate

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Paolo Ornati]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:22:37 -0700 (PDT)
Marc Perkel <mperkel@yahoo.com> wrote:

> 20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions of
> users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has a
> problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux is a
> cult.


Fixed in 2.6.23-rc (and not just for "rm"):

commit b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba
Author: Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com>
Date:   Thu Jul 19 01:48:16 2007 -0700

    mm: variable length argument support

    Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by copying the strings
    directly from the old mm into the new mm.
[...]

-- 
	Paolo Ornati
	Linux 2.6.23-rc3-g2a677896-dirty on x86_64

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

--- Paolo Ornati <ornati@fastwebnet.it> wrote:

> On Sun, 19 Aug 2007 06:22:37 -0700 (PDT)
> Marc Perkel <mperkel@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > 20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions
> of
> > users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has
> a
> > problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux
> is a
> > cult.
> 
> 
> Fixed in 2.6.23-rc (and not just for "rm"):
> 
> commit b6a2fea39318e43fee84fa7b0b90d68bed92d2ba
> Author: Ollie Wild <aaw@google.com>
> Date:   Thu Jul 19 01:48:16 2007 -0700
> 
>     mm: variable length argument support
> 
>     Remove the arg+env limit of MAX_ARG_PAGES by
> copying the strings
>     directly from the old mm into the new mm.
> [...]
> 
> -- 
> 	Paolo Ornati
> 	Linux 2.6.23-rc3-g2a677896-dirty on x86_64
> 


Good man!



Marc Perkel
Junk Email Filter dot com
http://www.junkemailfilter.com


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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Arjan van de Ven]

On Sun, 2007-08-19 at 06:22 -0700, Marc Perkel wrote:
> The important point that you are missing here is that
> the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
> that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.

no the important point is that you're an absolute horrible troll and are
posting things to the ENTIRELY WRONG MAILING LIST. For some people who
are new that happens sometimes as accident. You know better.

So please take this elsewhere and try to have better judgement in the
future as to what mailinglist you want to send your complaints to.

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Michael Tharp]

Marc Perkel wrote:
> The important point that you are missing here is that
> the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
> that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.
> This isn't about the rm command it's about programming
> standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't
> committed to getting it right.

Thanks man, you've made my day. I haven't laughed this hard at a mildly
technical discussion in weeks.

> Just like my thinking outside the box thread when I
> try to say "this is broken" people don't go fix it.
> Instead I get an explanation why Linux isn't capable
> of having an rm command that will delete an unlimited
> number of files.

Calling something that bas been working for decades broken, and offering
a vague idea that is not only riddled with usability issues but also
unimplementable in an even remotely efficient manner, and yet expecting
people to jump into action and write it for you while deprecating an
enormous amount of existing code, is something best described as
surreal. Disregarding peer review and calling it an "attack" is just
icing on the cake.

> I bet there are Microsoft people out there laughing at
> this.

Probably at you.

> THINK ABOUT IT PEOPLE !!!
> 
> 20 years, a million programmers, tens of millions of
> users and RM is BROKEN. Am I the only one who has a
> problem with this? If so - I'm normal - and Linux is a
> cult.

All hail Linus the great.

-- m. tharp

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Casey Dahlin]

Michael Tharp wrote:
> Marc Perkel wrote:
>   
>> The important point that you are missing here is that
>> the Linux world is willing to live with an rm command
>> that is broken and the Windows and DOS world isn't.
>> This isn't about the rm command it's about programming
>> standards. It's about that the Linux community isn't
>> committed to getting it right.
>>     
I wonder, do these sorts of people email random celebrities and tell 
them they suck? If not, why do they think emailing a developer mailing 
list about how much they hate their product, work ethics, and general 
way of life is more socially acceptable?

Re: [OT] Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Torsten Duwe]

On Sunday 19 August 2007, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:15:22AM +0200, Jiri Slaby wrote:
> > What does this have to do with rm command?
> Nothing, and no more with linux development. Marc confuses shell and rm.

> (please do not follow up on this OT thread, responses to /dev/null)

Then do not answer in the first place. Do not answer at all. There's tons of 
good literature that explains this. Don't feed the troll.

	Torsten

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Marc Perkel]

--- Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com> wrote:

> Marc Perkel napsal(a):
> > Let me give you and example of the difference
> between
> > Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> > what it's like out here in the real world.
> > 
> > Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> > 
> > rm *
> > 
> > What do you get?
> > 
> > /bin/rm: Argument list too long
> 
> What does this have to do with rm command?
> 


See what I mean?


Marc Perkel
Junk Email Filter dot com
http://www.junkemailfilter.com


       
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Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Valdis.Kletnieks]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 733 bytes --]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2007 22:20:34 PDT, Marc Perkel said:
> Let me give you and example of the difference between
> Linux open source world brain damaged thinking and
> what it's like out here in the real world.
> 
> Go to a directory with 10k files and type:
> 
> rm *
> 
> What do you get?
> 
> /bin/rm: Argument list too long

Given that you don't even understand that this message is issued by the
*shell* and not /bin/rm, and *why* it issues that sort of error message
when an argument string expands to be bigger than MAX_ARGV, and the fact
that there are extant patches to increase that to essentially any reasonable
size, why should we listen to you when you proclaim that you have any sort
of enlightenment about systems design?


[-- Attachment #2: Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 226 bytes --]

Re: The vi editor causes brain damage

[Tim Tassonis]

Hi Marc

> Before everyone gets pissed off and freaks out why
> don't you ponder the question why rm won't delete all
> the files in the directory. If you can't grasp that
> then you're brain damaged.
> 
> Think big people. Say NO to vi!

At first I thought you've got a point here: you definitely _do_ suffer 
from brain damage. Then again, I know too many people without brain 
damage that are using vi, so it must me something else.

Maybe a car accindent, or your mother drinking a bottle of vodka per day 
in your pregnancy?


Regards
Tim