idallen (07/23/82)
Programs that issue error messages should always, always, always prefix the message by their invoking name. I've just seen three "can't stat" messages come after doing an inews and while doing a readnews. Do I know which program they came from? No. I'll have to mess around needlessly to find out where the problem is. Please, all you Wizards and programmers, label your output! This is so very important in a multi-process environment where messages could come from any of several concurrently executing processes. -IAN! U of Waterloo
smb (07/25/82)
I agree that error messages should be identified. Unfortunately, it takes a little forethought -- 'perror' doesn't make that easy on you; it should take two arguments, or it should fill in the command-name itself. Amdahl's UTS (UNIX/370) system stores argv[0] in 'cmdname' in the run-time startup routine (crt0.o); that makes it globally accessible, like 'environ', and hence makes it easier on programmers. --Steve Bellovin