Re: [tlug] bash question

[Scott Robbins <scottro@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.


I'm actually going to jump in on JC's side here.  :)  (err, Josh, you're
not coming up to NYC soon, right?)

Seriously, I've had times where I spent an hour or more going through
the bash man page to find something, but couldn't.  Sometimes it's right
there, sometimes it's not.  Sometimes, I've simply, due to lack of
knowledge, been looking in the wrong place--for example, I wanted to
open an rxvt window and execute a command.  An hour of looking through
the bash man page didn't give me the answer, but then I thought, Gee,
let me look at the rxvt man page, and it was right there.


> 
> It was a simple typo, which made it even more difficult for me to spot.

Well, no one else makes them, so don't do it agan--err, again.  :) 

 
> 
> >A simple Google search would have turned up both of these excellent 
> >documents
> >on Bash scripting:
> 
> Could you post these links again as they didn't make it through in your 
> first post.


If Josh is referring to the bash thingies on linuxdoc.org, I'd have to
argue their value to the beginner.  I have a page which lists some links
that I've found helpful in getting my feet wet, which then enabled me to
make use of the links that I suspect he's posted.  (I'm guessing it was
the two bash guides, beginning and advanced, as I know he likes them--on
the other hand, he's a coder, and I'm not.)  My page is at
http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/shellscripting.html and gives
some links to some tutorials that I, as a very unskilled scriptor, have
found useful.


Sometimes, I think the problem is that when people research, they don't
mention what research they did.  I've actually never been flamed for
posting something like, I'm looking at the man page, but it's over my
head.  

Another, hopefully slightly amusing sidebar--when I first switched to
zsh, I wanted a prompt to print my working directory. I looked at the
man page and thought I'd figured it out, but my prompt kept coming out
${PWD} 
which of course, wasn't what I wanted.  I went on #irc, which is
probably even less tolerant of those that don't do their homework (not
directed at you, JC, I think that you did do your homework first and
just missed it) and asked.  As I'd shown I had looked at the man page,
it was helpfully, with no sarcasm, pointed out to me what I missed on
#freebsd, which isn't one of the more tolerant channels.  

And, I might as well mention this one before Josh does---the time when I
tried to comment C code with #.  (yeah, ok, everyone clean off their
monitor where they spewed their soda out.)  

Somewhere along the line I lost my point.  Oh well



-- 

Scott Robbins

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