I'm aware that GNU fileutils compiles cleanly on Solaris 8. That, however, implies that one has a compiler, or that one is willing and/or able to add packages to the system.

The fact of the matter is, I'm trying to apply a global configuration to a lot of machines, most of which do not have more than 540mb of internal disk space.

These machines have perl. They do not have gcc or forte, and it would take a long time to compile these packages, and it simply isnt reasonable to go and install a package to do that. It is much easier and practical to insert a

 du | perl

ism into my .profile.

I wanted also to say that this reminds me a lot of the typical irc #perl channels.

<user> how can i accomplish X?
<chanop> why on earth would you want to accomplish X? you can do Z ins
+tead!
<user> because Z isn't relevant at all to what I want to do.
[download]

this kind of response is just rampant on IRC and on mailing lists, and I even see it here. It bothers me because these answers pollute search engines like Google. When somebody is searching for an answer on how to, say, format a file into six columns with perl, they're going to find ten answers from the chanop/listmaven type saying "just use

fmt(1)

rather than explaining what they need to do." Far more effective than telling somebody something else they can do is to answer the question and point them in another direction that would help.

I've bitched about this in the past, but its been a year or so, so I'm inclined to bring it up again.

brother dep

--
Laziness, Impatience, Hubris, and Generosity.

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