Multiple executables in path (Was: NON-SOURCE POSTINGS CONSIDERED HARMFUL!)

[Dan Bernstein]

In article <1991Jan25.080151.11595 at convex.com> tchrist at convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> From the keyboard of brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein):
> :Ya want other behaviors? Fine, ya get other behaviors. These all use the
> :same strategy as the original.
> [ many nice pipe examples that no novice will ever decipher. ]

Who tf cares? Maybe you have novices maintaining your software at
Convex, but I don't really care whether a solution is obvious or even
comprehensible to novices. It's much more important that people be able
to understand the interface.

> :> But Tom's solution can easily be changed to have either behavior.
> :So what? So can any reasonable solution.
> And your solution, Dan, has not yet been proven to be such.

Huh? Non sequitur. What does program proving have to do with whether a
program can be changed to give a different behavior?

> Leave the
> programming langauge at sh if it will eliminate an irrevlant complaint of
> yours.

Huh? Wtf is irrevlant? Can anyone understand that sentence?

> To say "for each dir in path, print the pathname if
> there is an exececutable file of the target name there" is much easier to
> grok.

Huh? Much easier than what? My solution translates as ``Add the target
name to every dir in path, glob to select only the files that exist,
print.'' So you're working one element at a time while I'm working with
the entire set of directories at once. This isn't a real difference.

> Take both to a novice and ask their opinion on this.  I
> challenge you.

I don't know any UNIX novices who've learned test yet, and your solution
depends on -x. What do you mean by a novice?

---Dan