[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Limits of grep?



On Tue, Sep 26, 2000, guy keren wrote about "Re: Limits of grep?":
> be carefull not to trust manual pages too much - they are too often not
> updated. only checking the soruce program of the specific version of
> program you're currently using is usefull for drawing out definitive
> conclusions (by 'source' i refer to the c files, not the header files - as
> you saw, the posix limits header file is completely out of date).

Both are true advices, but it's like killing a fly with a hammer - you should
use the easiest and most appropriate tool, and only resort to a bigger tool
when really needed. What I'm trying to say is that for answering this simple
question I looked at 'man' (the easiest) and when I saw the answer isn't
there I 'grep'ed the source, and found the .h file. If this was a life-or-death
or a million dollar thing, I would have also gone to the ".c" files to check
that this macro is actually being used, and how, but this wasn't that
important...

Besides, I only wanted to point out that the limit people noticed comes from
the kernel, NOT from the shell. This is a fact I've known for a very long time
(since the time the limit was 4096 :)), and I didn't need neither the man
pages nor sources to tell me that.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |       Tuesday, Sep 26 2000, 26 Elul 5760
nyh@math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |I'm a peripheral visionary: I see into
http://nadav.harel.org.il           |the future, but mostly off to the sides.

=================================================================
To unsubscribe, send mail to linux-il-request@linux.org.il with
the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command
echo unsubscribe | mail linux-il-request@linux.org.il