lwall@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Larry Wall) (09/12/84)
In article <t4test.1082> chip@t4test.UUCP (Chip Rosenthal) writes: >My general comment to the network community is to reconsider when you >are going to post to multiple newsgroups. To software developers, >please recognize that Eunice exists. If possible, get a Eunice system >as part of your beta-site activities. I will certainly offer my >services towards these ends. You should know that the new release of rn (coming as soon as I test it on a V7 system) tries to be clever about Eunice. There is a patch to inews (untested, unfortunately) which puts out "symbolic link" files for multiply-posted articles, and an option in rn which will look at an opened article and allow one level of indirection. You still get the same number of files, but you don't get all the data replicated. I have worked on a Eunice system (not the system I'm on now) and so I know some of the frustrations involved. I should say that most of the problems with Eunice are not Eunice's fault directly, but come as a result of trying to cope with the Virtually Mindless Sadist underneath. In the case of links, however, I think TWG was either lazy or uninspired. They already have a level of indirection in name lookups, with hidden junk floating around in the directory--why can't they extend it just a teeny bit and make multiple hash files point to the same file, with some way of counting links? With the same amount of effort required to have a process cache links (only to be thrown away when the process exits) they could have had something better, it would seem. THE most frustrating thing about Eunice is how close it comes to doing things right. Consider this an encouragement, TWG. You have great potential in your product--just don't rust on your laurels. Larry Wall {allegra,burdvax,cbosgd,hplabs,ihnp4,sdcsvax}!sdcrdcf!lwall