Re: Process output of a simple command

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2009, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:

> As such, do you see anything wrong with this?
>
> # Test for very old Sun hardware, based on the sun4m architecture.
> if test "x`uname -m`" = 'xsun4m'

Yes.  There is a good chance that the warning will never be emitted 
and so this is just "dead code".  The reason is that a sun4m owner is 
unlikely to be interested in building your code.

> But how often do you see people report problems, only to be told they are 
> documented, or to RTFM?

Hardly ever.  If there will be a problem I take care to make sure that 
the problem does not exist.

> There is also the issue that in the case of Sun hardware, the person building 
> the software might not know much about the hardware. Such hardware is not 
> like a PC, where it is likely to be sitting next to you.

There used to be a sun4m machine sitting next to me, but not any more. 
It was traded in to become plastic powder.  It took an hour to build 
software that today's computers can compile in 30 seconds (or less).

> VERY often documentation lags code anyway.

It is more worthwhile to work on the documentation.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/