Question about pipes

[Jack Klein]

Frankly, I think the latter is better. Your mileage obviously varies.

My final remark on this topic:

The OP has decided that his question belongs in comp.lang.c, but that
anyone who replies here will not see their replies in comp.lang.c.
That is presumptuous and rude.

 

[Joona I Palaste]

[Follow-up set to comp.lang.c and comp.os.linux.misc removed as this has
nothing to do with c.o.l.m.]

Thanks for clarifying that.

I have realized that Jack is one of the few with little patience for
mistakes by newcomers or maybe he just had had a bad day.

Anyways, I have hardly used any C/C++ in my life. I am vaguely familiar with
it (having written some rudimentary code way back in my undergrad), but my
language of choice is Fortran 90/95. I was only trying to port something
useful I found written in C over to Fortran using the IFC posix library and
ran up against the absence of popen().

I do not intend to subscribe to comp.lang.c because it is not my language of
work/choice and I cannot be 100 % certain if any of my future queries would
be topical to this NG. I have friends who are computer scientists (who tend
to be more familar with C/C++ than people like me) and I am sure they would
be more patient with a rookie.

Thanks for taking the time.

Does this explain why you sent a question to both clc and colm but only
set follow-ups to colm? I.e. you weren't sure if pipes were an ISO C
concept and thought that you'd be running into Linux-specific questions
later on? If so, then I apologise in behalf of myself and Jack Klein,
if he'll allow me to apologise in behalf of him.

 

[Kenny McCormack]

My final remark on this topic:

The OP has decided that his question belongs in comp.lang.c, but that
anyone who replies here will not see their replies in comp.lang.c.
That is presumptuous and rude.

My one and only comment on this. Never post to clc; read it only for the
entertainment value. It *is* entertaining - watching people who clearly
don't work for a living (and more power to them - I can only envy their
lives of leisure) beating up on newbies (see below for further
explanation).

I can't for the life of me think of a question for clc that isn't either
off-topic or covered in a FAQ. That is, the two main ways that we beat up
on newbies are:
1) Tell them their post is OT (*).
or 2) Tell them that they should have read the FAQ(s), including any
other commonly available documention.

So, the point is, standard C is very well documented (bravo to the
standards writers!). So, it follows that anything that isn't covered in
the standards documents must be OT.

(*) Note that OT includes, but is not limited to, OS specific and
algorithm-oriented. Both of these are considered OT in clc.

P.S. Don't bother denying my assertions. You know they're all true.

 

[Joona I Palaste]

Kenny McCormack <[email protected]> scribbled the following

My one and only comment on this. Never post to clc; read it only for the
entertainment value. It *is* entertaining - watching people who clearly
don't work for a living (and more power to them - I can only envy their
lives of leisure) beating up on newbies (see below for further
explanation).

I can't for the life of me think of a question for clc that isn't either
off-topic or covered in a FAQ. That is, the two main ways that we beat up
on newbies are:
1) Tell them their post is OT (*).
or 2) Tell them that they should have read the FAQ(s), including any
other commonly available documention.

So, the point is, standard C is very well documented (bravo to the
standards writers!). So, it follows that anything that isn't covered in
the standards documents must be OT.

(*) Note that OT includes, but is not limited to, OS specific and
algorithm-oriented. Both of these are considered OT in clc.

P.S. Don't bother denying my assertions. You know they're all true.

You must be somehow missing the dozens of perfectly on-topic questions
about C programming that come here every week. I sometimes answer a few,
hopefully correctly, even. Most, but not all, of these could have been
solved by reading the FAQ, but you see me rarely, if ever, telling
newbies to just read the FAQ and shut up until they have done so.
Perhaps Dan Pop does it, but not me, and not many other regulars
either.
Lately this group seems to have turned into a war between us regulars
and a couple (make that a decent-sized *pair*) of newbies who want to
make this a newsgroup not about the C language, but about everything
connected to anything connected to a C compiler published by Microsoft,
GNU, or any other vendor. ${DEITY} knows, perhaps they think asking
questions about Windows Wordpad is OK, as long as they're writing C
code in it, and even *that* C code can consist 99% of Windows API
calls.
(Nothing wrong with Windows API calls per se - but asking questions
specific to it is off-topic here.)
(Or may be: example:
"Is the WIN32_DoFancyThing(hWnd *lpsziptrFooBar) function ISO C?" -
perfectly on-topic.
"I'm doing the following:
void *ptr = NULL;
WIN32_SystemAllocateMemory(ptr, 1000);
printf("%p\n", ptr);
but the printf() still shows ptr as NULL. What's wrong?" - perfectly
on-topic.
"What IO command designation do I need to pass to WIN32_DoIO() to
make the parallel port sign 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds'?" -
completely off-topic, as it's a question specific to the Windows
API.)

 

[Buck Rogers]

My one and only comment on this. Never post to clc; read it only for the
entertainment value.

This is also how I feel. Whilst I've never posted any OT stuff, the
"oppresive"
atmosphere in c.l.c has certainly stopped me posting here, in fear that
someone
more knowledgable(there are many here that I respect) will make me feel
plain
unwelcome.

This is an unmoderated newsgroup, and whilst the experts(regulars) here
work hard
to keep things on topic, I feel that the level of moderation is so high
that the group has become "strained" and people(newbies) like me just
don't feel
comfortable posting.

I now only read in c.l.c(so I can learn a thing or two) and make posts in
alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++. At the end of the day, I think c.l.c is a
newsgroups
for experts, and a.c.l.l.c-c++ is a group for newbies - this works well
for both
parties.

Buck.

 

[Robert Nichols]

:
:> Frankly, I think the latter is better. Your mileage obviously varies.
:
:My final remark on this topic:
:
:The OP has decided that his question belongs in comp.lang.c, but that
:anyone who replies here will not see their replies in comp.lang.c.
:That is presumptuous and rude.

FWIW, the news.admin net-abuse-faq has this to say about crossposts:

****
* 2.3) What about cross-posting?
*
* [Description contrasting cross-posting and multi-posting deleted]
*
* So, cross-posting is better than multi-posting. It's still very
* often a bad idea, and if you get carried away it'll still get
* cancelled (see 3.2, "What is the Breidbart Index (BI)?") This is
* often called Excessive Cross-Posting, or ECP. Some folks still call
* it "velveeta" because they like cutesy names.
*
* If you *must* cross-post, set the followups to a single appropriate
* group by adding a header line like:
*
* Followup-to: group.name.here
****

Now I don't happen to agree with that advice in all (many?, most?)
cases, but flaming someone for following published advice about
netiquette strikes me as rather harsh.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

... flaming someone for following published advice about
netiquette strikes me as rather harsh.

Indeed. I think that there are times when being angry with someone on Usenet
/is/ appropriate, but that this wasn't one of those times. In my opinion
(FWIW!) Jack owes the OP an apology.

 

[Richard Bos]

Cross-posting to more than one group but leaving some out of the
followups setting is just plain rude.

Not if you warn that you've done this, it isn't. In fact, under some
circumstances (question is likely to get good answers from several
groups, but the follow-up discussion is likely to be interesting only to
one) it's the best solution.
Of course, in this case it was off-topic in c.l.c to begin with and Mr.
Singh did _not_ warn us of the follow-up, but that doesn't warrant your
blanket statement.

Richard

 

[Michael Wojcik]

FWIW, the news.admin net-abuse-faq has this to say about crossposts:

****
* 2.3) What about cross-posting?
* ...
* If you *must* cross-post, set the followups to a single appropriate
* group by adding a header line like:
*
* Followup-to: group.name.here
****

And FWIW, Son-of-1036 implies the same, though it's not as explicit
as one might wish. Of course So1036 is just a draft, but it's
frequently cited as a netiquette source.

 

[CBFalconer]

Cross-posting to more than one group but leaving some out of the
followups setting is just plain rude. I would say you've worn out
your welcome in comp.lang.c.

I have to disagree. I consider he did exactly the right thing, in
not starting OT threads on other newsgroups, yet having answers
vetted in a group having knowledge of the subject. In fact, I
wish all cross-posters would emulate Mr Singh.

 

[CBFalconer]

.... snip ...

But what right has the OP to decide that he can hijack another
group's replies?

If you had not altered the distribution of your reply, this whole
thread would not exist. I think that would have been a preferred
outcome.

 

[Alan Balmer]

My final remark on this topic:

The OP has decided that his question belongs in comp.lang.c, but that
anyone who replies here will not see their replies in comp.lang.c.
That is presumptuous and rude.

It's pretty odd from the other end, too. There are "orphan" messages
in comp.unix programmer, which is apparently the group in which the OP
has chosen to post his replies, even though none of the messages he
replies to have come from there. Regardless of what the usenet
guidelines suggest, it seems to me that distributing pieces of a
conversation among different groups is not conducive to good
communication.