Karl.Kleinpaste@cbstr1.att.com (08/21/87)
This month's "Worst Error Message of the Month Award" goes unconditionally to compress 4.0. The reason: compress is compiled and runnable on a 3B2/400 here. I hadn't installed the ulimit hack I use on SysVRel2 3B2s to make a huge ulimit, so the ulimit was (we forgot) at 2048, or 1Mb max file size. We had a file transferred to this system from another system. The original was 1.45Mb, the compressed version 550Kb. File arrives in compressed form to the new 3B2. Uncompress is used to decompress it back to its normal self. Chug, chug, chug, uncompress hacks away at it, and then finally announces: Not a typewriter Well, duh! That's right, it's NOT a typewriter. It's a binary executable, suitable for exec'ing. It was only after mucking about with uncompress running in the bg, and creating an extra link to the intermediate uncompressed file, that we noticed that it stopped growing at 1048576, and then we got the complaint again when it thought it was done - whereupon the uncompressed version was removed so that the only way we could prove what happened was with the extra link to keep a hold of it. Lovely, just lovely. Karl