Re: SSD TBW

Don Y  <[email protected]> wrote:
>On 8/23/2026 9:08 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>> 
>> There's no reason you couldn't have a jpeg-comparing function these days.
>> That's the marvel of the Unix philosophy... modularity.
>
>Yet you don't see a "-jpeg" option to diff...

No.  Read the man page, diff calls itself a tool for comparing text files.

If you want to compare jpeg files you use odiff.  And you can call odiff
from your source code control system if it's modular.

>> Well, yes, because in the Unix world most useful files can be treated that
>> way.  Remember that "version control" started out initially as "source code
>> control."
>
>"Text" does nothing for you -- except let you use a text editor to
>maintain it.

And it makes it much easier for human beings to maintain.  If you'd like,
you can dispose of the compiler and assembler and just create executables
with cat > a.out but you're not going to do that because you are a human
being and human beings work well with text.

>Note that vipw(8) adds value -- it ensures all of the passwd-associated
>files remain in a consistent format.  BECAUSE IT IS AWARE OF THAT FORMAT,
>even though the files still identify as "text" (no magic numbers, etc.)

Yes, and emacs has context-sensitive modes for C and for English.  If you
like format-specific editors you can use them.  Personally they drive me
up the wall and I don't like them, but it's your call as a user.

>[I have all of the configuration details for my machines in a series
>of relational databases.  I had initially thought of backporting
>this into the BSD distros that I use but realized that effort
>would likely offend "historical purists".  So, instead, I have
>scripts that query the RDBMS and know how to "write" the appropriate
>files that are then copied into each host.  My *current* project
>doesn't rely on such a kludge and tools directly access the records
>in the appropriate tables.  Constrraints on the tables ensure that
>the tools need not validate their input -- the RDBMS won't accept
>bad data and is "guaranteed" to maintain the integrity of the data
>given to it.  My, what a novel idea...]

This is very much contrary to the Unix philosophy.  If you like it, that
is fine but it's not Unixlike.  But I am not sure why you are taking this
thread so far afield.
--scott

-- 
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."