Scripting Humor

Stupid Shell Tricks

This came to me from UMass.

Note that the '%' prompt indicates that the command should be issued from the C shell, and the '$' prompt indicates the Bourne shell.

% rm meese-ethics
rm: meese-ethics nonexistent

% ar m God
ar: God does not exist

% "How would you rate Reagan's incompetence?
Unmatched ".

% [Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Missing ].

% ^How did the sex change^ operation go?
Modifier failed.

% If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have?
Too many ('s.

% make love
Make:  Don't know how to make love.  Stop.

% sleep with me
bad character

% got a light?
No match.

% man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments.

% ^What is saccharine?
Bad substitute.

% %blow
%blow: No such job.

% \(-
(-: Command not found.

% sh

$ PATH=pretending! /usr/ucb/which sense
no sense in pretending!

$ drink < bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found

$ mkdir matter; cat > matter
matter: cannot create

[Mar 16, 2006] [Slashdot] If PHP developers could read they would be using Python...

Perl-related Humor

Larry Wall - Wikiquote

Larry Wall Quotes

All language designers are arrogant. Goes with the territory... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]

 

Although the Perl Slogan is There's More Than One Way to Do It, I hesitate to make 10 ways to do something. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

And don't tell me there isn't one bit of difference between null and space, because that's exactly how much difference there is. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

"And I don't like doing silly things (except on purpose)."

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

And it goes against the grain of building small tools. Innocent, Your Honor. Perl users build small tools all day long.

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */

--Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code

 

Because . doesn't match \n. [\0-\377] is the most efficient way to match everything currently. Maybe \e should match everything. And \E would of course match nothing. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

Be consistent.

--Larry Wall in the perl man page

Besides, including std_ice_cubes.h is a fatal error on machines that don't have it yet. Bad language design, there... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

Besides, it's good to force C programmers to use the toolbox occasionally. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

Besides, REAL computers have a rename() system call. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

break; /* don't do magic till later */

--Larry Wall in stab.c from the perl source code

 

But you have to allow a little for the desire to evangelize when you think you have good news.

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Chip Salzenberg sent me a complete patch to add System V IPC (msg, sem and shm calls), so I added them. If that bothers you, you can always undefine them in config.sh. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

/* dbmrefcnt--; */ /* doesn't work, rats */

--Larry Wall in hash.c from the perl source code

 

#define NULL 0 /* silly thing is, we don't even use this */

--Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code

 

#define SIGILL 6 /* blech */

--Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code

 

Does the same as the system call of that name. If you don't know what it does, don't worry about it.

--Larry Wall in the perl man page regarding chroot(2)

 

double value; /* or your money back! */
short changed; /* so triple your money back! */

--Larry Wall in cons.c from the perl source code

 

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

echo "Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice."

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

echo "Hmmm...you don't have Berkeley networking in libc.a..."
echo "but the Wollongong group seems to have hacked it in."

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

echo "ICK, NOTHING WORKED!!! You may have to diddle the includes.";;

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

echo $package has manual pages available in source form.
echo "However, you don't have nroff, so they're probably useless to you."

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

echo "Your stdio isn't very std."

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

#else /* !STDSTDIO */ /* The big, slow, and stupid way */

--Larry Wall in str.c from the perl source code

 

[End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...]

--Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

 

Even if you aren't in doubt, consider the mental welfare of the person who has to maintain the code after you, and who will probably put parens in the wrong place.

--Larry Wall in the perl man page

 

"Help save the world!"

--Larry Wall in README

 

Hey, I had to let awk be better at *something*... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

I already have too much problem with people thinking the efficiency of a perl construct is related to its length. On the other hand, I'm perfectly capable of changing my mind next week... :-)

--Larry Wall

 

I don't know if it's what you want, but it's what you get. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

I dunno, I dream in Perl sometimes...

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

If I allowed "next $label" then I'd also have to allow "goto $label", and I don't think you really want that... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

If I don't document something, it's usually either for a good reason, or a bad reason. In this case it's a good reason. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

"I find this a nice feature but it is not according to the documentation. Or is it a BUG?"
"Let's call it an accidental feature. :-)"

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

if (instr(buf,sys_errlist[errno])) /* you don't see this */

--Larry Wall in eval.c from the perl source code

 

if (rsfp = mypopen("/bin/mail root","w")) { /* heh, heh */

--Larry Wall in perl.c from the perl source code

 

If you consistently take an antagonistic approach, however, people are going to start thinking you're from New York. :-)

--Larry Wall to Dan Bernstein in <[email protected]>

 

If you want to program in C, program in C. It's a nice language. I use it occasionally... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

If you want to see useful Perl examples, we can certainly arrange to have comp.lang.misc flooded with them, but I don't think that would help the advance of civilization. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

If you want your program to be readable, consider supplying the argument.

--Larry Wall in the perl man page

 

I know it's weird, but it does make it easier to write poetry in perl. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

I'll say it again for the logic impaired.

--Larry Wall

 

I might be able to shoehorn a reference count in on top of the numeric value by disallowing multiple references on scalars with a numeric value, but it wouldn't be as clean. I do occasionally worry about that.

--Larry Wall

 

I'm sure that that could be indented more readably, but I'm scared of the awk parser.

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

In general, if you think something isn't in Perl, try it out, because it usually is. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

In general, they do what you want, unless you want consistency.

--Larry Wall in the perl man page

 

Interestingly enough, since subroutine declarations can come anywhere, you wouldn't have to put BEGIN {} at the beginning, nor END {} at the end. Interesting, no? I wonder if Henry would like it. :-)

--Larry Wall

 

I think it's a new feature. Don't tell anyone it was an accident. :-)

--Larry Wall on s/foo/bar/eieio in <[email protected]>

 

"It is easier to port a shell than a shell script."

--Larry Wall

It is, of course, written in Perl. Translation to C is left as an exercise for the reader. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

It's all magic. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

It's documented in The Book, somewhere...

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

> (It's sorta like sed, but not. It's sorta like awk, but not. etc.)
Guilty as charged. Perl is happily ugly, and happily derivative.

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

It's there as a sop to former Ada programmers. :-)

--Larry Wall regarding 10_000_000 in <[email protected]>

It won't be covered in the book. The source code has to be useful for something, after all... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

: I've heard that there is a shell (bourne or csh) to perl filter, does : anyone know of this or where I can get it?
Yeah, you filter it through Tom Christiansen. :-)

--Larry Wall

 

: I've tried (in vi) "g/[a-z]\n[a-z]/s//_/"...but that doesn't : cut it. Any ideas? (I take it that it may be a two-pass sort ofsolution).
In the first pass, install perl. :-)

--Larry Wall <[email protected]>

 

I won't mention any names, because I don't want to get sun4's into trouble... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Just don't create a file called -rf. :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

last|perl -pe '$_ x=/(..:..)...(.*)/&&"'$1'"ge$1&&"'$1'"lt$2' That's gonna be tough for Randal to beat... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Let's say the docs present a simplified view of reality... :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Let us be charitable, and call it a misleading feature :-)

--Larry Wall in <[email protected]>

 

Lispers are among the best grads of the Sweep-It-Under-Someone-Else's-Carpet School of Simulated Simplicity. [Was that sufficiently incendiary? :-)]

--Larry Wall

Ruby? (Score:2, Funny)
by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 30, @11:23AM (#3435770) "Ruby is a refuge for Perl-morons who finally realize that the hideous hairball a dead-end, but whose ego refuses them to submit to Python."

[ DaemoncodeWhy not TCL ] by Richard Stallman, Pretty funny misunderstanding of the ideas of TCL.

As interest builds in extensible application programs and tools, and some programmers are tempted to use Tcl, we should not forget the lessons learned from the first widely used extensible text editor--Emacs.

The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere "extension language". It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that!

Extensions are often large, complex programs in their own right, and the people who write them deserve the same facilities that other programmers rely on.

The first Emacs used a string-processing language, TECO, which was inadequate. We made it serve, but it kept getting in our way. It made maintenance harder, and it made extensions harder to write. Later Emacs implementations have used more powerful languages because implementors learned from the problems of the first one.

Another lesson from Emacs is that the way to make sure an extension facility is really flexible is to use it to write a large portion of the ordinary released system. If you try to do that with Tcl, you will encounter its limitations.

Tcl was not designed to be a serious programming language. It was designed to be a "scripting language", on the assumption that a "scripting language" need not try to be a real programming language. So Tcl doesn't have the capabilities of one. It lacks arrays; it lacks structures from which you can make linked lists. It fakes having numbers, which works, but has to be slow. Tcl is ok for writing small programs, but when you push it beyond that, it becomes insufficient.

Tcl has a peculiar syntax that appeals to hackers because of its simplicity. But Tcl syntax seems strange to most users. If Tcl does become the "standard scripting language", users will curse it for years--the way people curse Fortran, MSDOS, Unix shell syntax, and other de facto standards they feel stuck with.

For these reasons, the GNU project is not going to use Tcl in GNU software. Instead we want to provide two languages, similar in semantics but with different syntaxes. One will be Lisp-like, and one will have a more traditional algebraic syntax. Both will provide useful data types such as structures and arrays. The former will provide a simple syntax that hackers like; the latter will offer non-hackers a syntax that they are more comfortable with.

Some people plan to use Tcl because they want to use Tk. Thankfully, it is possible to use Tk without Tcl. A Scheme interpreter called STk is already available. Please, if you want to use Tk, use it with STk, not with Tcl. One place to get STk is from ftp.cs.indiana.edu:pub/scheme-repository/imp/STk-2.1.tar.Z

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