• (cs) in reply to PCBiz

    I can understand piping data from one Unix command to the next - that's what you do in shell scripting. Using a separate script, and interim scratch file as the pipe between them sounds like someone not knowing how to use the tools available. If you hold your thumb on top of the nail before bringing down the hammer, don't blame the hammer....

    For example, previous suggestions that this could be written in just a few lines of shell script are entirely correct (isql to retrieve the data,  piped to awk to do additional formatting/filtering/etc., piped to tee to save a copy of the output in a file, piped to ftp to send the data file someplace).

    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool.

    IMHO, beyond the rookie's poor use of unix tools, the WTF here is: where was the person who should have reviewed the system before deployment? (surely, nobody with half a brain would deploy a funds-transfer system without at least having it reviewed for correctness, points of failure, and general WTF-ishness, no?)

    
            
    
        
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  • 
 The Big Kumar   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    The REAL WTF is people saying "The REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Beaten   (unregistered)                                         in reply to The Big Kumar
            
            
    
                
    The real WTF is getting beaten in saying the REAL WTF is people saying ...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Þ   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    The REAL WTF is people saying "the
Real WTF" over and over and over and over and over ....  and
i'm going to be sick

    

    

    
You're new here, aren't you?
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Mr_Daemon   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Beaten
            
            
    
                
    This is no unix philosphy -- it's lame "haha I know unix, watch me" philosphy. I am a Unix admin, and this is shitty. 

    I can do just about anything I need to do in bash, sed, awk (and even they can be replaced with "tr" and "cut" for most uses).

    Actually there's something with people learning Unix that think they have to use every single feature of the shell no matter what they're doing. I think it has to do with the documentation being written in order to show off as much as possible. The amount of people who do

    cat somefile | grep expression

    is astoundishing. I call this pipe abuse disease. (PROTIP: you can do "grep expression file")

    The amount of people who also use * to tar up folders and then complain it doesn't contain hidden files afterwards.

    Or those who can't understand the difference between "killall" on Linux and "killall" on Solaris. The day someone tried to kill httpd that way found out that the name did exactly as it implied.


    Of course I abuse the shell myself sometimes. I am quite quick to do a "for i in * ; do..." on the command line because it's the first thing that comes to my mind... one day, I was too lazy to kill all the 9 squid pids (some were named squidGuard, so killall squid would not work) so I did this:

    for i in ps waux | grep [s]quid | awk '{ print $2 }' ; do kill -9 $i ; done 
    Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it's right... to me Unix is usually all about lean, mean, short and efficient tasks. Stuff that runs quick to do something, precisely.

    I'd say the thing above is even against the Unix philosophy :P

    But I do understand the OP was making fun of those "who-feel-it-has-to-be-this-way". Unix is simple once you understand it.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Beaten
            
            
    
                
    The fake WTF is posting complaints about other posts being annoying.
    

    That's annoying^2.
    

    If you ignore them, they will go away ... mostly.  Except the first posts, because people get too excited when they see '0 replies'.
    

    About the need to break things into scripts rather than run one long query .... If you can break the process up into seperate script functions, you could do the same with your stored procedure queries ... using BEGIN, END , COMMIT, ROLLBACK etc.  That would give all of the same functionality of breaking points and step by step analysis of the process, but be way more manageable.
    

    I will say I love the GREP command.  Can't they add it to Ansi 92 9well the next version) SQL?
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 BAReFOOt   (unregistered)                                         in reply to RJ
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    2. Apparently the 4 previous developers had never heard of a JOIN in SQL. They would handle all join-type operations by looping through records in PHP and then issuing sub-queries for every row of the main result set. Occasionally the nesting would be 3 or 4 levels deep. This came to my attention which realizing that a 1000-member list of customers + status was taking 10 minutes to appear in the browser.

    3. Identically-named functions copied and pasted into different contexts, and subtly altered for that context.

    4. <b>Reverse</b> indentation. Yes, that's right... you would see a function name about 3 tabs in, and then the body of code stuck right on the margin.

    5. Phantom "else" clauses:

    if($check = 1){
        ...do something
    }
    else{
        ;
    }

    
6. Code in about half of the PHP files had about 5 or 6 (or 7) spaces between lines. I guess someone wanted to inflate their LOC.

    7. umm... forget it. I'm too disgusted to even finish this list. Let's just say that by the end I had almost completely redesigned their system, as well as migrated to PostgreSQL, leaving the design standard enough to migrated to Oracle if needed.


    Sounds like classical lycos germany coding style.
    The whole site is made that way... and even worse!

    By the way: The spaces come from continually saving in windows format on a unix box and re-reading it as unix text due to bad editor settings. Those guys never even heard of LOC or the advantage of clean indenting! ;)
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Mr_Daemon
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:

    But I do understand the OP was making fun of those "who-feel-it-has-to-be-this-way". Unix is simple once you understand it.
    

    Once they make a Visual Studio Unix Shell Script (where the awk and sed has intellisense) it might catch on a bit more.
    

    My favorite thing about UNIX was only rebooting my server every 2 or 3 years.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 DZ-Jay   (unregistered)                                         in reply to RJ
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    Being the "RJ" in question above (and a longtime FreeBSD and Linux user), I had no intention of making fun of the Unix philosophy; rather "how much work some will do to imagine they are working in the Unix tradition:".

    But yes, the WTF was just bad design, combined with Unix newbie arrogance. As I recall, the guy who did the script actually spent 2 months preparing, reading up on the "theory" of EDI, etc...

    In fact, the above was only one example of design WTF that I found on arriving at that company. Among others:

    1. Test data commingled with production data in a single MySQL database (never mind that using MySQL for banking data is questionable in itself). In fact, I finally gave up on ever identifying which was which, and made a clean break with a new system in the end.

    2. Apparently the 4 previous developers had never heard of a JOIN in SQL. They would handle all join-type operations by looping through records in PHP and then issuing sub-queries for every row of the main result set. Occasionally the nesting would be 3 or 4 levels deep. This came to my attention which realizing that a 1000-member list of customers + status was taking 10 minutes to appear in the browser.

    3. Identically-named functions copied and pasted into different contexts, and subtly altered for that context.

    4. <b>Reverse</b> indentation. Yes, that's right... you would see a function name about 3 tabs in, and then the body of code stuck right on the margin.

    5. Phantom "else" clauses:

    if($check = 1){
        ...do something
    }
    else{
        ;
    }

    
6. Code in about half of the PHP files had about 5 or 6 (or 7) spaces between lines. I guess someone wanted to inflate their LOC.

    7. umm... forget it. I'm too disgusted to even finish this list. Let's just say that by the end I had almost completely redesigned their system, as well as migrated to PostgreSQL, leaving the design standard enough to migrated to Oracle if needed.


    So, again, what you are saying is that it has nothing to do with UNIX and its philosophy, but with braindead programmers implementing bad design.

        -dZ.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Bus Raker
            
            
    
                
     Bus Raker:
    

    The fake WTF is posting complaints about other posts being annoying.
    

    That's annoying^2.
    

    If you ignore them, they will go away ... mostly.  Except the first posts, because people get too excited when they see '0 replies'.
    

    About the need to break things into scripts rather than run one long query .... If you can break the process up into seperate script functions, you could do the same with your stored procedure queries ... using BEGIN, END , COMMIT, ROLLBACK etc.  That would give all of the same functionality of breaking points and step by step analysis of the process, but be way more manageable.
    

    I will say I love the GREP command.  Can't they add it to Ansi 92 9well the next version) SQL?
    

    

    Have you ever played with MKS' unix utilities for DOS? They have a GUI front end for grep.. so you gotta navigate to the folder, double click to launch the gui, then check off "-i" (case insensitive), navigate to the folder to be grep'd, etc. Gaaaaaaaa!
    

     
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 dazed   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Mr_Daemon
            
            
    
                
     Mr_Daemon:
    . The amount of people who do

    cat somefile | grep expression

    is astoundishing.

    

    Oh good - I can now feel all superior because it never occurred to me to do that.
    

    Mind you, I don't think it would have immediately occurred to me to use SQL as a text-formatting utility either...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 mcguire   (unregistered)                                         in reply to He Sed Awk
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:

    Eventually he tossed the O'Reilly book "SED/AWL" on my desk and told me that he had no use for a developer who was not willing to learn.  I still have that book, he was fired as the tech manager, and all of the quality developers, myself included, no longer work there.


    WTF?  The O'Reilly SED/AWK book is one of the worst things they've ever produced.  Just better than the Head First... series, in fact.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 2 Hurried 2 login   (unregistered)                                         in reply to codeman
            
            
    
                
     codeman:
    Have you ever played with MKS' unix utilities for DOS? They have a GUI front end for grep.. so you gotta navigate to the folder, double click to launch the gui, then check off "-i" (case insensitive), navigate to the folder to be grep'd, etc. Gaaaaaaaa!
    

     

    I saw that MKS POS once - company was  to paranoid to use the free stuff cuz there was nobody to sue if it didn't work.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Beaten   (unregistered)                                         in reply to 2 Hurried 2 login
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:

    I saw that MKS POS once - company was  to paranoid to use the free stuff cuz there was nobody to sue if it didn't work.


    You can do that?

    I thought all EULAs has paragraphs about not acknowledge any responsibility.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 3 Hurried 2 login   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    <font size="3">This smells like a one off process that got institutionalized.

    Happens all the time.

    The real WTF (if there is one here) is how long it took to decide to design and write it right.

    This stuff has been around since forever.  Folks put tape on the drum cards.  Folks hit the UPSI switches on the console of 360s.  Then IBM actually EMULATED those suckers in software so you could manually intervene in the program through a program!!

    I figured it out: as the quality of the forum software goes up, the quality of the posts goes down.


    </font>
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 WASABI   (unregistered)                                         in reply to The Big Kumar
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    The REAL WTF is people saying "The REAL WTF is
people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying...

    

    
Stack overflow
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 X   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    Hey, it could have been worse...  they could have used Perl!  :-)

    (I kid!  I have the Camel book sitting right next to me and I love regular expressions.  Speaking of which, I bet all that text manipulation could've been done in a single regex, and I could've even put comments in it with the /x modifier!)
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Jon   (unregistered)                                         in reply to WASABI
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
     Anonymous:
    The REAL WTF is people saying "The REAL WTF is
people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying...
    Stack overflow
    Tail recursion
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to DZ-Jay
            
            
    
                
    Yeah, this is certainly against the Unix philosophy of "Keep It Simple,
Stupid".  Scripts are great for many things, and piping output
from one program to another is a great feature of Unix, but when the
task is as large and as important as this, I would not leave it to
something like this nightmare.  Shell scripts ought to be used to
help chain together a series of programs together.
    

    
Obviously, whoever designed this didn't fully understand Unix (and
thus, Unix philosophy) if the script was being kept in a directory in
/usr and required being the root user to get.  Were those
non-techies were logging in as root through the GUI?  (shudders)
    

    

    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to password
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    I bet the root password was probably something like 'cookies' too, right?

    ?admin=true
    :)
            
    
        
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  • 
 Skwirlmaster   (unregistered)                                         in reply to notromda
            
            
    
                
    >> I just can't fathom how someone can understand awk, sed, and stuff, and
not understand basic
    >> programming concepts.  Someone please shoot the
developer and put him out of our misery.

    Well aren't you presumptuous. Don't you think someone who understood awk, sed, etc. would have gotten it done in 1 day? The developer probably spent "weeks" googling, and posting strange questions to message boards.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to codeman
            
            
    
                
     codeman:

    Have you ever played with MKS' unix utilities for DOS? They have a GUI front end for grep.. so you gotta navigate to the folder, double click to launch the gui, then check off "-i" (case insensitive), navigate to the folder to be grep'd, etc. Gaaaaaaaa!


    So?  You want the command-line version, use the command-line version - it's not like they don't provide one.  Or you could split the difference by adding the folder with the GUI front ends to your PATH.

    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to emurphy
            
            
    
                
     emurphy:
     codeman:

    Have you ever played with MKS' unix utilities for DOS? They have a GUI front end for grep.. so you gotta navigate to the folder, double click to launch the gui, then check off "-i" (case insensitive), navigate to the folder to be grep'd, etc. Gaaaaaaaa!


    So?  You want the command-line version, use the command-line version - it's not like they don't provide one.  Or you could split the difference by adding the folder with the GUI front ends to your PATH.

    

    Actually, I only use the command line version, and yes, it most certainly is on my path (I've been writing complex shell scripts for decades); I just thought the GUI version was hysterical ;)
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 HidekiAI   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    Job security...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Matthew Bogosian   (unregistered)                                         in reply to awefawfeawfe
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    Bleh.  I've seen this lots with so-called Unix pros.  They just can't let go of Unix, and have to wedge shit like scripts into everything, even if they're not required.
    

    The poor design of the described system has nothing to do with UNIX (or any of its variants). It has to do with the abuse of tools with which one is familiar and a lack of familiarity with more appropriate tools (all-I-have-is-a-hammer-and-I'm-not-even-that-good-with-it syndrome).
    

    Java/Perl/Windows/whatever zealots (or neophites) think Java/Perl/Windows/whatever is the best solution for everything.* The truth of the matter is that the person who created this particular array of unnecessarily-complicated scripts to perform a relatively simple task was probably a summer intern or somebody who just plain didn't know any better.
    

    A script is likely to be a worthy solution here as the author noted.
    

    If you prefer to misappropriate responsibility to some "Unix pros [who] just can't let go of Unix, and have to wedge shit like scripts into everything", then you are no better than the mythical scape goat you have concocted to be the recipient of your disparagement. However, if you are instead referring to those who consistently hack together a half-baked just-get-it-to-work solution, then I am sad to inform you that those individuals do not solely exist as UNIX users/developers. They are everywhere on every system using every technology in every market sector in every company.
    

      

    • Everybody knows the real solution is always Python.
      • 

    

     Anonymous:
    very Unixy indeed
    

    No, it is not. It is very inadequately-designed and not maintainable. It is no more "Unixy" than poorly-implemented UIs are "Windozy" or inconsistently-named functions are "PHP-like".
    

    UNIX was designed to be powerful and simple where small (often discrete) tools could be used in concert to create processes that were more productive than the sum of the abilities of their parts (a look at the man pages of find, tar and nc bring many to mind).
    

    UNIX was the epitome of implementation reuse well before any of modern computing buzzwords were even coined. That does not mean that UNIX (like any other technology) can't be abused. It can, just like SQL, Java, XML, threading, TCP/IP, the Internet, C#, grid computing, [insert your favorite technology that you think is above the fray here]. If you think that a handful of inefficient and unmaintainable shell scripts is bad, you're right. If you think it reflects poorly on UNIX, fine, but I ask you, what then do you say about integrating a web browser with the OS kernel?
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 :)   (unregistered)                                         in reply to 3 Hurried 2 login
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    I figured it out: as the quality of the forum software goes up, the quality of the posts goes down.


    </font>
    
Amen.
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Bus Raker
            
            
    
                
     Bus Raker:
    

    If you ignore them, they will go away ... mostly.  Except the first posts, because people get too excited when they see '0 replies'.
    

    

    OMG!!111!!eleven!11!!! '0 replies'!!1!11!!!11 Eh, WTF, ehm, fffff.... FFFF.... FFFFF!!!!! FFFFist!11!!1!!!
    

    /me pants heavily.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to codeman
            
            
    
                
     codeman:
    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool. 
    
You mean good code can be written with brainfuck? That's a rather broad concept of good code.

    IMHO a company which provides online money transactions should have a "better" system than a bunch of shell scripts. But than again i may not have grasped this whole UNIX-philosophy thing.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 wazoox   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Shakes
            
            
    
                
    Surely not. Perl excels at database manipulation, and this would have been made with 20 lines of good perl, and would be rock-solid. This was made in shell by someone who don't even know proper shell programming.

    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to RJ
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    No, Perl was not involved in that mess. It was just a collection of Bash scripts. And for an example of the scripting proficiency involved, (AFAIR) the author used the following sort of construct to figure out how far to pad the numbers:

    if AMOUNT >= 10 
        then PADCHARS = 8
    else
    if AMOUNT >= 100
        then PADCHARS = 7
    else
    #etc... proceeding up to 1000000

    

    Whoa...
    

    Just whoa... Shame you haven't posted some of these code nuggets in the first place, even the most AWK/SED-intoxicated monkey wouldn't have dared defending the WTF.
    

     Anonymous:
     Anonymous:
     Anonymous:
    The REAL WTF is people saying "The REAL WTF is
people saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying "the REAL WTF is people saying "the REAL WTF is people
saying...
    Stack overflow
    Tail recursion
    

    Infinite loop at best, no optimization (and therefore stack overflow) at worst, the compiler still needs to infer a termination condition to optimize the tail-recursion.
    

     Anonymous:
    >> I just can't fathom how someone can understand awk, sed, and stuff, and
not understand basic
    >> programming concepts.  Someone please shoot the
developer and put him out of our misery.

    Well aren't you presumptuous. Don't you think someone who understood awk, sed, etc. would have gotten it done in 1 day? The developer probably spent "weeks" googling, and posting strange questions to message boards.
    

    Don't you think someone who understood awk, sed, etc... would have realized early on that they were not tools fit for the task at hand?
    

     Radiation Dude:
     codeman:
    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool. 
    
You mean good code can be written with brainfuck?
    

    Why of course, just as good code can be written with ASM, or in binary... 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 ssy   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
        Well well... RJ bumped into something similar I had to try to maintain for a while. "My" system created a bit over 250 temp files (every time new ones) of sql, temp strings, temp results, substrings, cats etc etc. System took about 45 minutes to run. Good thing about this was, that it WAS totally automatic, one row in root's crontab. Bad thing was, that it took ages to debug when everything when wrong again. Documents..? Something you eat?

    After a while I created a system of my own, takes about 10 seconds to run... Again not so Unix-ish, but I prefer the new one.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 BenB   (unregistered)                                         in reply to RJ
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:

    2. Apparently the 4 previous developers had never heard of a JOIN in SQL. They would handle all join-type operations by looping through records in PHP and then issuing sub-queries for every row of the main result set. Occasionally the nesting would be 3 or 4 levels deep. This came to my attention which realizing that a 1000-member list of customers + status was taking 10 minutes to appear in the browser.
    

     
    

    Um, nitpick - Until fairly late in the mysql 3.xx series Mysql didn't do joins via JOIN (you had to fudge via where clauses).
    

    I had to deal with server running an old version MySQL without the proper SQL JOINs, drove me batty for a while but then the box had been running non-stop since 1999. 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to masklinn
            
            
    
                
     masklinn:
    snip...
     Radiation Dude:
     codeman:
     

    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool. 
     You mean good code can be written with brainfuck?
     

    Why of course, just as good code can be written with ASM, or in binary... 
    

    

    1. 'brainfuck' ???
    

    2. The point I was making was not that all tools are appropriate (except for a few select kinds of systems, who really programs in assembly anymore?), but that given a particular tool, an implementation for a given task can be done both with and without WTF's; it's the person holding the hammer, not the hammer...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Jeremy D. Pavleck   (unregistered)                                         in reply to codeman
            
            
    
                
     codeman:
     masklinn:
    snip...
     Radiation Dude:
     codeman:
     

    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool. 
     You mean good code can be written with brainfuck?
     

    Why of course, just as good code can be written with ASM, or in binary... 
    

    

    1. 'brainfuck' ???
    

    2. The point I was making was not that all tools are appropriate (except for a few select kinds of systems, who really programs in assembly anymore?), but that given a particular tool, an implementation for a given task can be done both with and without WTF's; it's the person holding the hammer, not the hammer...


    Yes, brainfuck. As in http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/bf/

    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Boland23   (unregistered)                                         in reply to RJ
            
            
    
                

    4. <b>Reverse</b> indentation. Yes, that's right... you would see a function name about 3 tabs in, and then the body of code stuck right on the margin.
    

     
    

    We truly are in the looking glass at this point....
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Boland23   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Boland23
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    


    4. <b>Reverse</b> indentation. Yes, that's right... you would see a function name about 3 tabs in, and then the body of code stuck right on the margin.
    

     
    

    We truly are in the looking glass at this point....
    

    

     
    

    er, <i>through </i> the looking glass.......
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Hashbangperl   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Shakes
            
            
    
                
    The orginal digs dinner isn't perl, in fact I'll wager he wrote a perl script to replace it in a handful of lines. 

    He says shell scripts, and then that it calls sed, awk and grep.. These are what perl replaces with a nice powerful general purpose language, together with CPAN, Best Practices, Unit Tests, Quality Metrics, Automated testing, logging, and cross-platform capabilities, not to mention the world leading Template Toolkit, etc.

    Dumb ass!
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Jeremy D. Pavleck
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
     codeman:
    

     masklinn:
    snip...
     Radiation Dude:
     codeman:
     

    Bad code can be written with any tool, just as good code can be written with any tool. 
     You mean good code can be written with brainfuck?
     

    Why of course, just as good code can be written with ASM, or in binary... 
    

    

    1. 'brainfuck' ???
    

    2. The point I was making was not that all tools are appropriate (except for a few select kinds of systems, who really programs in assembly anymore?), but that given a particular tool, an implementation for a given task can be done both with and without WTF's; it's the person holding the hammer, not the hammer...
    



    Yes, brainfuck. As in http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/bf/

    

    That made my week :)
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Geof   (unregistered)                                     
            
    
                
    As an owner of 2 cats, I take offense to this: "Shooting a cat in the face"
    

    Why not say "Shooting a dog in the face" next time, just to even things out?
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Geof
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    

    As an owner of 2 cats, I take offense to this: "Shooting a cat in the face"
    

    Why not say "Shooting a dog in the face" next time, just to even things out?
    

    

    Maybe it's a watergun...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Shakes
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    I bet those scripts were written in Perl by a guy wearing a penguin t-shirt


    I actually work on a legacy system for a major financial institution, where the exact same kind of obfuscation is acheived. Their problem is the system has evolved over the years from proprietary formats to more open types, and from a complete UNIX environment (workstations and server) called DNIX to Windows workstations and SCO UNIX servers.

    Note that penguin-types were not involved in this construction (except that we now maintain and update it). It sure gives my script maintenance skills a work out.  8-)


    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Fred   (unregistered)                                         in reply to Valdas
            
            
    
                
    Speaking about not knowing your technology. Also a classical case of 'I
know syncsort and do not want to learn how to make use of optimizer,
indexes or whatever a database provides'..
    

    

    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to Shakes
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
    I bet those scripts were written in Perl by a guy wearing a penguin t-shirt

    

    
Nonsense! You obviously have never seen a Perl script. If it had been Perl the op would not have been able to *read it*! ;->
    
            
    
        
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    (cs)                                     
            
    
                
    Dunno what you guys are squawking about. Some people I know would call this and writing VBSCRIPT ASP pages "Job Security".
    

    ;-)
    
            
    
        
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    (cs)                                         in reply to dazed
            
            
    
                
     Anonymous:
     Mr_Daemon:
    . The amount of people who do

    cat somefile | grep expression

    is astoundishing.

    

    Oh good - I can now feel all superior because it never occurred to me to do that.
    

    Mind you, I don't think it would have immediately occurred to me to use SQL as a text-formatting utility either...

    

    
Not just cat, see the Useless Use of Cat award:
    

    
http://laku19.adsl.netsonic.fi/%7Eera/unix/award.html
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 unix pipe master   (unregistered)                                         in reply to jo42
            
            
    
                
    It needs more links in the chain...
    

    doQuery.ksh | tee saveQuery.txt | parseQuery.sh | tee saveParse.txt | formatOutput.bf | tee saveOutput.txt |createXml.pl | tee saveXml.txt | mailOutput.bash | tee mailOutput.txt | mailXml.tch | tr "wtf" "WTF" | sed -e 's/[fF][aA][lL][sS][eE]/True/g' -e 's/^.*\(WTF\).*$/\1!!!/g' | awk '{/Paula/ printf("Brillant!");}' |  tar cvf `date +'%Y%m%d`.audit.tar *.txt | compress `date +'%Y%m%d`.audit.tar 
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 Mike5   (unregistered)                                         in reply to marvin_rabbit
            
            
    
                
     marvin_rabbit:
     Jake Vinson:
    On thinking it through, this whole thing could be done with a 10 line script running 3 SQL queries. But that wouldn't be very Unix-ish, would it? Did I mention that the person who did this took weeks...?

    Don't forget to add enough Enterprise to it!


    Hey, you got it all backwards. It already is "Enterprise sh" [is that Enterprishe ?]

    
            
    
        
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    (cs)                                         in reply to Mike5
            
            
    
                
    [Pro forma]The real WTF is[/Pro forma] blaming Unix or Unix developers for the debacle. This one looks to me like a Windows developer thrown in the deep end; since Windows people do not do much batch scripting, they generally do not have a feel for modularity.

    Anyone used Monad, the new Windows shell environment? It looks to be the equal of any Unix scripting language for this sort of thing...
    
            
    
        
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  • 
 John Hensley   (unregistered)                                         in reply to RyuO
            
            
    
                
     RyuO:
    Anyone used Monad, the new Windows shell environment? It looks to be the equal of any Unix scripting language for this sort of thing...

    Last I heard, Monad was not going to follow Unix's approach of scraping randomly formatted text.
    
            
    
        
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  • 
    (cs)                                         in reply to WeatherGod
            
            
    
                
     WeatherGod:
    Yeah, this is certainly against the Unix philosophy of "Keep It Simple,
Stupid".  Scripts are great for many things, and piping output
from one program to another is a great feature of Unix, but when the
task is as large and as important as this, I would not leave it to
something like this nightmare.  Shell scripts ought to be used to
help chain together a series of programs together.
    

    
Obviously, whoever designed this didn't fully understand Unix (and
thus, Unix philosophy) if the script was being kept in a directory in
/usr and required being the root user to get.  Were those
non-techies were logging in as root through the GUI?  (shudders)
    

    

    

    since when is that the Unix philosophy?  I seem to remember the philosophy being "Make simple tools that have a single function.  Do complicated things by combining these simple tools."  Thus grep, cat, sed, cut, awk, etc are all the simple tools, and piping them together in a rediculous chain inside bash is the method of combining them.
    

    This is exactly what I expect from a classic "UNIX" solution, where all the data is stored in files and directories.
    

    Databases and fancy programming languages are the wave of the future.  I call them the "Linux" solution, so as not to confuse things with all the crap that went on in the elder UNIXes.
    
            
    
        
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