The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

lidden · 2011-06-29 Reply Admin

realmerlyn:
Camel:
When perl is allowed, here's my one-liner:
perl -e 'print @{[<>]}."\n"' /var/run/netstat_r.lst
I don't believe that does what you think it does. It'll do the same thing as:
perl -e '@list = <>; print "@list\n";'
which will merely print the entire file with spaces prepended to all lines but the first.

No he has the array in scalar context.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Oh man, the irony... Just yesterday my coworker and I wrote a bash script to count the number of lines in our project. Apparently we could have done it much easier. CURSE YOU, MARK BOWYTZ FOR NOT DOING THIS YESTERDAY!! fist shake

(oh, and just for reference: what we did was find all the files in the directories, grep for files that end in .java, .cpp, .h[...], grep each of those files, counting the numbers of newlines in each, and then adding that to a global counter. Interestingly enough, the counts from wc and our bash script are two lines off - plus our bash script runs maybe only twice as slow? Which only takes about three seconds for ~850,000 lines of code(which of course doesn't take out comments at all, plus there's a lot of code from libraries that we've hacked up so that linecount is actually much higher than the "real" line count))

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

trtrwtf:
Solomon:
what a bunch of humourless overweight beardy freaks.

For the record, I haven't got a beard.

Am I'm not overweight, I'm "husky", at least that's what my mom says.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
Oh great, I can hear the stampede of linux geeks waddling to their keyboards now...

sigh You .Net programmers get all the chicks, don't you?

boog · 2011-06-29 Reply Admin

realmerlyn:
Camel:
When perl is allowed, here's my one-liner:
perl -e 'print @{[<>]}."\n"' /var/run/netstat_r.lst
I don't believe that does what you think it does. It'll do the same thing as:
perl -e '@list = <>; print "@list\n";'
which will merely print the entire file with spaces prepended to all lines but the first.

So he's wrong because your deformed rewrite doesn't work the same way?

Oh science! Does that make it... a Perl strawman?

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

ParkinT:
cihv:
I don't work with toilets on the command line so I count lines with awk:
awk '{lines++}END{print lines}' <filename>
That is just too AWKward!

it was two awk words

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

rm5248:
Oh man, the irony... Just yesterday my coworker and I wrote a bash script to count the number of lines in our project. Apparently we could have done it much easier. CURSE YOU, MARK BOWYTZ FOR NOT DOING THIS YESTERDAY!! *fist shake*
(oh, and just for reference: what we did was find all the files in the directories, grep for files that end in .java, .cpp, .h[...], grep each of those files, counting the numbers of newlines in each, and then adding that to a global counter. Interestingly enough, the counts from wc and our bash script are two lines off - plus our bash script runs maybe only twice as slow? Which only takes about three seconds for ~850,000 lines of code(which of course doesn't take out comments at all, plus there's a lot of code from libraries that we've hacked up so that linecount is actually much higher than the "real" line count))

when you say that it was only twice as slow.. were you including the time to develop it too? Way too many people on this site seem to think that the only performance which matters occurs at runtime.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

rm5248:
Oh man, the irony... Just yesterday my coworker and I wrote a bash script to count the number of lines in our project. Apparently we could have done it much easier. CURSE YOU, MARK BOWYTZ FOR NOT DOING THIS YESTERDAY!! *fist shake*
(oh, and just for reference: what we did was find all the files in the directories, grep for files that end in .java, .cpp, .h[...], grep each of those files, counting the numbers of newlines in each, and then adding that to a global counter. Interestingly enough, the counts from wc and our bash script are two lines off - plus our bash script runs maybe only twice as slow? Which only takes about three seconds for ~850,000 lines of code(which of course doesn't take out comments at all, plus there's a lot of code from libraries that we've hacked up so that linecount is actually much higher than the "real" line count))

when you say that it was only twice as slow.. were you including the time to develop it too? Way too many people on this site seem to think that the only performance which matters occurs at runtime.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Marc:
My favorite script:
:(){ :|:& };:

Me no like you no more. I put the smileys in the terminal and then my machine decided not to respond. I had to do hard reboot and now I lost all my unsaved works. I was working hard on all of those commands to get them just write and now they are all lost.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

justsomedude:
Windozer:
C-Octothorpe:
Oh great, I can hear the stampede of linux geeks waddling to their keyboards now...

What's a wc? What's a perl? Why do all of these backslashes go the wrong way? What's going on? HALP ME, I DON'T UNDERSTAND!!!

It's okay dear. Here, come sit down and play some minesweeper.

We can get you some REAL mines to play it with!!

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Neither do I..

gawk 'END { print NF }' < filename

gawk being available on all non-windows platforms I support..

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

SteamBoat:
I don't know which pisses me off more. UNIX/Linux humor or the people that find it funny.
Probably the people.

You asked for it:

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Amateurs, just open /var/run/netstat_r.lst in notepad and count the none blank lines manually, you get paid the same at the end of the day.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

reductio ad ridiculum:
SteamBoat:
I don't know which pisses me off more. UNIX/Linux humor or the people that find it funny.
Probably the people.
You asked for it:

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep

What no head? Disappointing date.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Zebedee:
reductio ad ridiculum:
SteamBoat:
I don't know which pisses me off more. UNIX/Linux humor or the people that find it funny.
Probably the people.
You asked for it:

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep
What no head? Disappointing date.

Yes. How can one forget? And on further thought, it ought to start out with "find, tail".

Just like Unix, we can build our own joke.

lolwtf · 2011-06-29 Reply Admin

That sounds more like Windows users...

and my quote disappeared and I CBA to go get it again. oh well.

2011-06-29 Reply Admin

Should have used awk then

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

C-Octothorpe:
tk421:
PPPPFFFTT! HA HA HA HA HA!!
You're calling me oblivious when you thought I was being serious when I jokingly took you seriously! That's why I didn't know what you meant! I'm like "what's he talking about?" and then I realized "oh, this is like being called stupid by a retard! he's too stupid to know what stupidity is!"

ha ha oh, man...

It's like - you come here every day make a fool of yourself, but I still like having you here anyway. Never leave.

Cue lame attempt to re-garner self-esteem that C-Octo is known for

Ok, so let me get this straight: I'm retarded because I didn't get you were joking with me, but you're brilliant because you didn't realize I was joking?

Whatever makes you feel better...

I absolutely cannot believe you responded....

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Cuntothorpe:
C-Octothorpe:
tk421:
PPPPFFFTT! HA HA HA HA HA!!
You're calling me oblivious when you thought I was being serious when I jokingly took you seriously! That's why I didn't know what you meant! I'm like "what's he talking about?" and then I realized "oh, this is like being called stupid by a retard! he's too stupid to know what stupidity is!"

ha ha oh, man...

It's like - you come here every day make a fool of yourself, but I still like having you here anyway. Never leave.

Cue lame attempt to re-garner self-esteem that C-Octo is known for

Ok, so let me get this straight: I'm retarded because I didn't get you were joking with me, but you're brilliant because you didn't realize I was joking?

Whatever makes you feel better...
I absolutely cannot believe you responded....

Even douche bags are entitled to off-days.

Don't feed the troll! Didn't you read the sign on the cage?

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

RogerC:
snoofle:
Could have been worse; this is in our code base as part of a larger script - written by a self proclaimed DOS batch expert as part of Linux pre-processing:
#!/bin/ksh
# Determine the number of non-blank lines contained in a file
if [[ -z $1 ]]; then 
   echo "Usage: $0 fileName"
   exit 1
fi
typeset -i n=0
while read line; do # ksh strips leading/trailing white space/blank lines
  if [[ "$line" != "" ]]; then
     (( n = n + 1 ))
  fi
done < $1
echo $n
Kinda like what we saw here two days ago. Whether it's SQL or ksh, failure to learn your tools leads to gross inefficiency.

I could name a few tools here - and 9/10ths of them are registered... I've learned my tools!!

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Coyne:
Anonymous Coward:
But this version supports platforms where wc doesn't have -l.

It's totally non-portable, though, if the platform doesn't have wc.

If it doesn't hav a WC then it might do with a portable one...

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

reductio ad ridiculum:
SteamBoat:
I don't know which pisses me off more. UNIX/Linux humor or the people that find it funny.
Probably the people.
You asked for it:

unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep

Likies!

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Jingle Bells:
I could name a few tools here - and 9/10ths of them are registered... I've learned my tools!!

You can learn a tool, but you can't learn him much.

Anonymouse · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

frits:
Windozer:
What's a perl?
I can find all the perls I need here.

If that's not enough, there's even Megaperls, like this.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

grep -c . file

is all you need for non-blank lines. the "." is a regexp wildcard, and matches any line with at least one character.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

cihv:
I don't work with toilets on the command line so I count lines with awk:
awk '{lines++}END{print lines}' <filename>

You don't have to count the lines yourself...

awk '{}END{print NR}' <filename>

Severity One · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

The basic problem is that people are scared of Unix, and its lookalikes that for some obscure reason you are not allowed to call Unix. Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, AIX, Ultrix, Irix: if it has 'ls', it's Unix. Well, if it has 'ls' and isn't BeOS, that is.

Anyway, what's known as 'Cargo Cult Programming', applies to Unix as well. People use 'ls -la', always, even if they'd want a different output. Because someone once showed them how to use 'ls -la', and therefore this mantra is repeated for all eternity. One does not question the mantra.

Similarly, people do not read man pages. Man pages are like the Holy Book before those pesky laymen insisted that they should be allowed to read it as well. One does not consult the Holy Book, or the man pages, for fear that a lightning bolt would incinerate them on the spot.

It applies to JavaDocs (and, presumably, the equivalents in other programming environments such as .NET) as well. The times I've seen convoluted code because the author didn't read the docs...

Also, people try to solve a problem as far as they can, and then ask the Guru for the rest of the solution. In such cases, I like to take a step back, because more often than not, they've worked out some complex way to do something that is standard functionality that they didn't know about, or which has a much simpler solution.

Now my colleagues have a rather different idea of what 'simple' means than I do, but that's because they're all mad.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

dohpaz42:

TRWTF is um perl?

Nah; the real WTF, and a very common one, is at the very beginning: the use of cat, which does nothing but waste cpu time. I see that done all the time, and I always wonder what's going on in people's minds. Why would someone even waste their own time typing the cat command when the next command would accept the file name as an arg? Is there some problem that I don't know about when a command line finishes too quickly?

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Severity One:
The basic problem is that people are scared of Unix, and its lookalikes that for some obscure reason you are not allowed to call Unix. Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, AIX, Ultrix, Irix: if it has 'ls', it's Unix. Well, if it has 'ls' and isn't BeOS, that is.

Um, the reason isn't obscure at all; it's called "trademark law". The name "unix" is a registered trademark (at least in the US). You can legally implement an act-alike OS, by following the POSIX standard, but you can't legally call your OS "unix" without being sued by whichever corporation owns the trademark this month. Yes, you could get a license, but then you'd have to pay royalties for every copy you sold (or handed out free). It's cheaper and avoids legal hassles to just trademark a different name.

ParkinT · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

laff:
ParkinT:
cihv:
I don't work with toilets on the command line so I count lines with awk:
awk '{lines++}END{print lines}' <filename>
That is just too AWKward!
it was two awk words

I have been out-punned. Touche sir.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

boog:
boog:
Cuntothorpe:
C-Octothorpe:
tk421:
PPPPFFFTT! HA HA HA HA HA!!
You're calling me oblivious when you thought I was being serious when I jokingly took you seriously! That's why I didn't know what you meant! I'm like "what's he talking about?" and then I realized "oh, this is like being called stupid by a retard! he's too stupid to know what stupidity is!"

ha ha oh, man...

It's like - you come here every day make a fool of yourself, but I still like having you here anyway. Never leave.

Cue lame attempt to re-garner self-esteem that C-Octo is known for

Ok, so let me get this straight: I'm retarded because I didn't get you were joking with me, but you're brilliant because you didn't realize I was joking?

Whatever makes you feel better...
I absolutely cannot believe you responded....
Why wouldn't you?
Why would you?

(Because we know it's probably coming sooner or later.)

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

jc:
dohpaz42:

TRWTF is um perl?

Nah; the real WTF, and a very common one, is at the very beginning: the use of cat, which does nothing but waste cpu time. I see that done all the time, and I always wonder what's going on in people's minds. Why would someone even waste their own time typing the cat command when the next command would accept the file name as an arg? Is there some problem that I don't know about when a command line finishes too quickly?

"cat <file> |" works basically every single time and takes ~ 1 second extra to type. The cpu time is negligible. Reading the documentation for various commands to find the correct syntax to use to input a file takes much much longer than 1 second, so for those of us who don't know the format of every single command, and who are happy to spend 1 second extra typing a command, it makes sense to use 'cat'.

The real WTF is people like you thinking there is anything wrong with that.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

David:
Still could've done that much better:
/bin/sed '/^\W*$/d' /var/run/netstat_r.lst | wc -l
Could probably write an awk script that wouldn't need the pipe, but this is quite a bit more readable (if you're going to use regex's anyways).

(gnu) grep -v ^$ -c /var/run/netstat_r.lst ?

BentFranklin · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

reductio ad ridiculum:
unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep

It's funnier as:

unzip | strip | touch | finger | ...

It's all in the delivery.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

This WTF is yet another fine example of a Useless Use Of Cat.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

anon y mouse:
This smacks of someone doing something I WISH I had done to someone.
I was asked in a chatroom at work in all seriousness:

"Where is the /etc/hosts file??"

I wish my response had been as convoluted as that approach above....

I can only imagine it would be: ~/../../etc/hosts

of course you could try ~/.someDir/../../../bin/../var/log/../../etc/

fubarsnafu · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

WTF, I have nothing better to do...

#!/bin/bash

input=${*}

usage() { cat<<-!

    ${0##*/} <input>

!

} begin() { circle }

end() { begin } circle() { jerk } jerk() { fist }

fist() { uranus }

uranus() { wc -l ${input} }

(( ! ${#} )) && usage && exit

while begin; do end done

science_gone_bad · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

From:

DCRoss

 echo | gunzip -c $(find /usr/share/man -name 'wc\.*' | head -1 |awk '/wc/ { print $1}' | tail -1 ) | sed '' | /usr/bin/groff -mtty-char -Tutf8 -mandoc | cat -u | pager -s

Gentlemen, we have a winner in the Rube Goldberg Command entry!! My hat is off to you!

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

The real WTF is that he did not use a database.

fubarsnafu · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

My apologies for lack of indentation in the aforementioned utility. I realize that is considered poor practice. I hand my hands full. I'll try to do better next time.

I thought it was file based data, maybe I should parse it as XML? or switch to MongoDB?

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Too Lazy To Sign In:
Well, WoW64 does make a twisted kind of sense if you write it out - Windows on Windows64.

Ohhhh, I thought it was the new Blizzard expansion pack.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Why not just let the shell handle the whitespace?

echo wc -l </var/run/netstat_r.lst

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

That guy over there:
random_garbage:
Actually, IIRC, for historical reasons, Win64 still keeps all the relevant 64-bit libraries, etc. in the System32 folder.
For maximum fun, the 32-bit compatibility libraries are stored in the WoW64 folder...

Figure that one out...
WoW64 apparently stands for “Windows 32-bit On Windows 64-bit”, so that part makes sense. I’m sure there’s a reason why it’s still %WinDir%/System32 too, probably because there’s no path variable for it and has to be hard-coded into programs. Then again, there’s pretty much no reason to put anything in there, but that’s a discussion for another time.

But you can just use %SYSTEM% to get the location of your SYSTEM32 folder.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

BentFranklin:
reductio ad ridiculum:
unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes, fsck, umount, sleep

It's funnier as:

unzip | strip | touch | finger | ...

It's all in the delivery.

Pipe me.

2011-06-30 Reply Admin

DCRoss:
I don't see why he couldn't have just read the manual page for wc to find out what options it supported. It's as easy as typing
echo | gunzip -c $(find /usr/share/man -name 'wc\.*' | head -1 |awk '/wc/ { print $1}' | tail -1 ) | sed '' | /usr/bin/groff -mtty-char -Tutf8 -mandoc | cat -u | pager -s

Luckily, things are much simpler for those of us in Linux-land. As the man page advises, you simply need to type

info coreutils 'wc invocation'

to discover what wc does.

random_garbage · 2011-06-30 Reply Admin

Khootrapali:
That guy over there:
random_garbage:
Actually, IIRC, for historical reasons, Win64 still keeps all the relevant 64-bit libraries, etc. in the System32 folder.
For maximum fun, the 32-bit compatibility libraries are stored in the WoW64 folder...

Figure that one out...
WoW64 apparently stands for “Windows 32-bit On Windows 64-bit”, so that part makes sense. I’m sure there’s a reason why it’s still %WinDir%/System32 too, probably because there’s no path variable for it and has to be hard-coded into programs. Then again, there’s pretty much no reason to put anything in there, but that’s a discussion for another time.

But you can just use %SYSTEM% to get the location of your SYSTEM32 folder.

You can, but people don't. Raymond Chen's explanation.

How Not to Count Lines

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