ugliness in scanf(3)

[zben at umd5.UUCP]

In article <190 at mplvax.UUCP> cdl at mplvax.UUCP (Carl Lowenstein) writes:
>This programmer is so stupid as to expect to find the behavior
>of scanf documented in the manual.

Ye Gods! Expect the behavior of system primitives to be DOCUMENTED in
the MANUAL??  Why, why, thats as bad as expecting meaningful diagnostics
from the system language compiler!  "Error in conditional" indeed...

Clearly this poor person is from a 'dinosaur' environment, probably an
IBM 370 or Univac 1100 system, where people actually take more than 10
seconds to document what they have done, and where you have a ghost of a
chance of finding out **ANYTHING** from the manuals, as opposed to having
to prostrate yourself before a Unix Guru (read "high priest") to get the
real scoop...

Clearly I'm more than a little burned by being called a 'high priest' for
merely spending 15 years reading Univac manuals and system code, to get to
the point where I can *answer* questions from users too *lazy* to *read*
the manuals...  Still, this sort of sillyness is exactly why I have a 
hard time believing that Unix and C are "for real".

At this point I find Unix and C to be at the halfway point in the reality
spectrum between my real Univac 1100 work and trying to do systems programs
in Applesoft Basic...
-- 
Ben Cranston  ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben  zben at umd2.ARPA