*BSD News Article 21380


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From: blymn@mallee.awadi.com.au (Brett Lymn)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Subject: Re: modification to /sbin/ping
Date: 25 Sep 1993 03:17:09 GMT
Organization: AWA Defence Industries
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <BLYMN.93Sep24211709@mallee.awadi.com.au>
References: <1868@optigfx.optigfx.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: mallee.awadi.com.au
In-reply-to: mrm@optigfx.com's message of 21 Sep 93 21:48:00 GMT

>>>>> On 21 Sep 93 21:48:00 GMT, mrm@optigfx.com (Mike Murphy) said:


[nice idea about making ping return a 1 status on unreachable]

Mike>   
Mike> would work. This would be convenient.

It would work and would be convenient.  This change is of the same
order that me and another guy had quite a while ago (not on a *BSD
system) about making make not require a tab before commands in rules
but rather use whitespace.  All was fine until we tried to use the
make files on another system - they died badly.  We relented and
un-hacked our version of make.  The moral of the story is non-standard
breaks things horribly when you move out of the non-standard
environment, so if you have a script that relies on the return value
of ping and you try to use that script on a system where ping always
returns 0 you will have a broken script.

Go with the zen of life, contemplate one architecture computing and
see that history will grind you to a pulp if you get in it's way :-)

Mike> I'm hesitant to suggest this change because the last
Mike> few people who suggested that behavior other than
Mike> stock BSD might be good were burned at the stake...

Consider yourself mildly toasted.

--
Brett Lymn