/bin/true

[Greg Noel]

In article <401 at brl-smoke.ARPA> gwyn at brl.ARPA writes:
>[The true and false commands] main use is to hang system-type links on.
>For example, on the system I'm typing this on, "gould" is linked to "true"
>and other system types such as "vax" are linked to "false".  These commands
>are very useful if you maintain code for multiple systems all in the same
>place.

Well, I admit that doing it that way is better than nothing, but I've been
in the same environment and I've always considered it a bit of a misfeature.
The problem is one of future compatibility -- if you add a new machine type,
you have to put in a link on every machine in the world.  A better scheme
would have been a single command, say "machid", that only consisted of the
command "echo gould".  Then, the usual sequence of:
	if pdp11; then ...
	elif vax; then ...
	elif pyr; then ...
	elif gould; then ...
	elif tower; then ...
	elif sequent; then ...
	elif amiga; then ...
	elif telefunken; then ....
	else echo "I don't know how to handle this machine"; fi
(an exageration, admittedly, but do \you/ have links for all those machines?)
becomes:
	case `machid` in
	pdp11)	... ;;
	vax)	... ;;
	pyr)	... ;;
	gould)	... ;;
	tower)	... ;;
	sequent) ... ;;
	amiga)	... ;;
	telefunken) ... ;;
	*)	echo "I don't know how to handle machine-type `machid`" ;;
	esac
This is no more difficult to manage, and easy to extend compatibly.  And if
you don't have a link for "telefunken" then it doesn't cause your makefile
to punt.......
-- 
-- Greg Noel, NCR Rancho Bernardo    Greg at ncr-sd.UUCP or Greg at nosc.ARPA