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From: "Dave Korn" <dave DOT korn AT artimi DOT com>
To: "'Lloyd Wood'" <L DOT Wood AT surrey DOT ac DOT uk>
Cc: "'Chris Elliott'" <cl3ellio AT interchange DOT ubc DOT ca>, <cygwin AT cygwin DOT com>,
   <geomview-users AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net>,
   <geomview-devel AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net>
Subject: RE: Geomview & Cygwin setup
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:55:16 +0100
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On 28 April 2006 15:42, Lloyd Wood wrote:

> At Friday 2006-04-28 15:17 +0100, Dave Korn wrote:
>>> If you want people to use the information you provide rationally, do
>>> not colour that information with irrational attempts at humour to
>>> provide misinformation that causes doubt.
>>> 
>>> We need to trust the output of gcc -v.
>> 
>>   No, this is completely wrong and absolutely not what you want to do.  The
>> output of "gcc -v" is a human-readable summary of various internal
>> information which can be obtained by more reliable means for programmatic
>> use. 
> 
> So you admit that gcc -v's output is deliberately unreliable and will
> lie to the human reader, then.

  What are you gibbering about?

  "Unreliable"?  It's the exact verbatim same every single time you run it.
That seems 100% reliable to me.  Of course, it's pretty unreliable if you try
to use it for purposes it is not intended for, like matching different
versions of gcc that target the same arch, because there can be more than one
version of gcc for any given target and they will have different version
strings.  It's also unreliable if you try and use it to make the tea or
predict the weather.  All three of these uses are not what it was intended for
and hence your fault, not the compiler's or anyone else's.

  And "lie"?  Now you're attributing intentionality to an inanimate object.

  Give it up.  It's only *you* who believes that the output of gcc -v is meant
to be some kind of identification mechanism.  AND YOU ARE WRONG.

  Sure, there's enough information there for an intelligent human being to
extract the regularities and notice the differences, but it's a false
inference that those regularities are systematic, or that a simple
pattern-matching test can suffice to replace the kind of intellectual skills
that a human being brings to bear on the problem.


    cheers,
      DaveK
-- 
Can't think of a witty .sigline today....


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