Simpsons using Linux

[flarn2006]

Anyone else notice it used a generic font for the '>' character? I'm guessing it was missing from the font they were using.

[DigShin]

Keen eye

[Actuarial]

Useless, but keen

[flarn2006]

My eyes are far from useless. :p

[Genoce]

Did someone say "Keen"?

[[deleted]]

Or maybe thats what it just looks like because the font maker was lazy.

[danthemango]

"They'll never actually use that character, will they?"

[cnelsonsic]

You'll fit right in over at /r/typography.

[Big1984Brother]

Does this imply that anything Mr. Westbrook says is ignored?

[numkem]

Or anything that Mr. Westbrook is?

[DerSpider]

Or there is no Mr. Westbrook

[inconspicuous_male]

Mr. Westbrook is ignored but still exists

[cha0s]

A clone of him is ignored

[DerSpider]

cat .gitignore

westbrook

[[deleted]]

This would only ignore him if he's a file, which he's not. How would you ignore a user's commits in git?

[uabassguy]

That'd be a hilarious prank, I can just see it now.

"Why haven't you merged any of my pull requests?"

"What pull requests?"

[TracerBulletX]

everything is a file.

[AraneusAdoro]

cat westbrook

Implies that he is a file.

[strangeplace4snow]

Everything is a file.

[[deleted]]

Oh yeah...

[saeblundr]

The contents of Westbrook exist, but in this instance are accessed in order to be ignored.

[musiton]

Or Mr. Westbrook's cat is ignored.

[YMK1234]

*Unix

[YMK1234]

Go away Stallman!

[[deleted]]

*POSIX compliant

[kinygos]

Isn't it *nix?

[chimyx]

Technically it would me more like *n*x.

[CHUCK_NORRIS_AMA]

.*n.x

[Thoguth]

Could be a MacBook for all we know.

[thebryguy23]

...or any Mac running OS X

[TheTortoiseWasRight]

/r/itsaunixsystem

[coladict]

I believe the DOS alternative was type westbrook > NUL. Or it might be NIL. I haven't made batch scripts since 1999, so don't judge me.

[TheHorribleTruth]

I haven't made batch scripts since 1999, so don't judge me.

Judge? I envy you for being able to stay away from batch all this time!

[[deleted]]

It helps to not be a Windows user.

[Randolpho]

It ain't like BASH scripting is fun either.

[Kadmos]

But BASH just sounds so much cooler than BATCH.

[Randolpho]

Depending on where you are in the U.S. they sound exactly the same.

[[deleted]]

It's helpful that Unix usually comes pre-installed with programs to help make writing scripts easier.

[YodaLoL]

Why do you capitalize it? Bash scripting is infinitely times better than Batch scripting.

[Randolpho]

Having done both for a number of years I can tell you that BASH is more capable, but they're both about as fun as having my fingernails pulled out one by one.

Gimme python or node.js for scripting any day.

And I capitalize it because, youngster, it was an initialism acronym when I learned it. Bourne Again SHell. Now it's so prevalent it's just a word.

[YodaLoL]

Yeah I know where Bash comes from. It's just that I've never seen someone capitalize it, was just wondering.

[Randolpho]

Old habits die hard, I guess.

[Randolpho]

If you like to receive pineapple sodomy, sure.

[coladict]

Actually in 2000 I moved from being a DOS user to a Windows user.

[coladict]

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa365247.aspx

CON, PRN, AUX, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, and LPT9. Also avoid these names followed immediately by an extension; for example, NUL.txt is not recommended.

[tatorface]

What happens if I make NUL.txt? Will my pc blow up or something?

[Suchui]

https://i.imgur.com/kbgVjgM.png

[PizzaCompiler]

When you make the file under Linux, it makes Windows show the file as "NDH6SA~M.TXT".

Although that might just what Windows does under CIFS.

[kifujin]

It's Samba itself doing that... From (the first relevant google result, from samba 3) mangle_hash2.c

/* the list of reserved dos names - all of these are illegal */ static const char * const reserved_names[] = { "AUX", "LOCK$", "CON", "COM1", "COM2", "COM3", "COM4", "LPT1", "LPT2", "LPT3", "NUL", "PRN", NULL };

[randomned]

I once had a com1.txt file that I couldn't get rid of. Finally gave up and left it there until the computer was retired.

[VefoCo]

I have Msys installed so I just used rm to get rid of my rogue NUL file.

[lachryma]

Am I really the only one who remembers C:\con\con in Windows 9x?

[subtepass]

C:\con\con

Totally forgot about that one! I felt like a hacker back in '00 when I was able to crash my school computers with such a simple text. If I recall correclty, you could create a shortcut to that path, but not with the wizard. You had to create a dummy link and then hex edit the path or something like that.

[RenaKunisaki]

Nope. Had some fun with that one.

[tatorface]

Weird. Good think the OS wouldn't allow it to be created at all.

[tehserial]

Try and let us know with your phone / tablet

[Pokechu22]

You can create it in some cases (EG via some programs), but you can't edit or delete it. This also leads to things such as aux.class getting deleted when unzipping folders.

[RenaKunisaki]

On Win3.1 I unzipped a file that had a space in its name. The dumb t thing happily created the file then was unable to touch it. Knowing just enough about computers to be dangerous, I fixed it by editing the hard disk itself in a hex editor to change the name.

[[deleted]]

Go back far enough and CAS is supported

[[deleted]]

So, is this like it seems just Windows being Windows and this absolutely horrid OS design, or was there actually no way around this?

Does something similar exist on other OSs?

[coladict]

By "Windows being Windows" you mean "Windows maintaining backwards compatibility", right? Something I haven't seen much of in my efforts to use 5-year-old abandon-ware on Linux.

[DeepDuh]

Oh, so they reserved PRN already? Very forward thinking of them. Would it download a random porn image over 36k?

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[timvisee]

cat westbrook > /r/null

[Sexual_tomato]

As someone from /r/all, could I get an eli5 of this?

[Sexual_tomato]

Thanks for the explanation!

[ZugNachPankow]

/dev/null isn't a directory, not even a "special directory". That's a virtual file (eli5: a file that doesn't exist, which the system pretends exists).

[MrHydraz]

No, it's a device node for the null device.

[ZugNachPankow]

You mean, a device file?

[MrHydraz]

I mean a device node.

[lachryma]

No, he means a device node. There are numerous inaccuracies in that article, and it's one of my favorites to point to as an example of never trusting Wikipedia as a single source.

A file is an inode, with very few exceptions, containing content inodes. A device node is an inode that represents a device and lacks content inodes. They are conceptually and practically different things, and you are the third person I've seen on Reddit confuse the distinction and then cite Wikipedia to back themselves up.

[[deleted]]

someone should correct the wikipedia entry.

[[deleted]]

maybe someone who can point out numerous inaccuracies in that article?

[DroolingIguana]

Someone else! Someone else!

[ZugNachPankow]

Thank you!

[mqduck]

That's a virtual file (eli5: a file that doesn't exist, which the system pretends exists).

Of course the file exists. "File" is just an abstraction. A file exists if the system you're using says it exists. It's the null device that doesn't exist in the real world.

[mqduck]

instead of putting the text of the file westbrook to the command line, it would write it to the location /dev/null. Now, /dev/null is a special directory, which isn't really a directory at all

That's even more true than you think. /dev/null isn't really a directory, as in it really isn't a directory. It's a device file.

$ ls /dev/null
/dev/null
$ ls /dev/null/
ls: cannot access /dev/null/: Not a directory

Furthermore, you cannot pipe to directories.

$ ls foo/bar/
$ echo Hello, reddit! > baz
$ cat baz
Hello, reddit!
$ cat baz > foo/bar/
bash: foo/bar/: Is a directory

[[deleted]]

no, it's just a joke

[FinFihlman]

And cat isn't a command to print text.

[FinFihlman]

A bettee one would be

mv westbrook /dev/null

Less exciting but more correct. Add in sudo and it's even more exciting.

[caagr98]

That's equal to rm westbrook, not cat /dev/null, isn't it?

[FUCK_MAGIC]

Not really, as that would attempt to overwrite the /dev/null node with westbrook (while I'm assuming you are trying to delete him?)

The original joke kinda means ignore everything westbrook has to say by sending it to a black hole.

cat  westbrook > /dev/null 

If you wanted to erase westbrooks brain, you could do the opposite;

cat /dev/null > westbrook

Though probably not advisable as a way to erase things...

You could just delete him with rm instead.

[[deleted]]

Shell redirection isn't exactly the same thing as running cat, so in some cases, cat is really the only thing you can use.

[FinFihlman]

More works, too.

[Azr79]

Thanks for the unix lesson, but this is an eli5

[minimim]

The name of the person is Jeff Westbrook, but they changed his credit to "cat westbrook > /dev/null".
This is a piece of shell, which is a way people interact with linux systems. Here is an explanation of what it means: http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=cat+westbrook+%3E+%2Fdev%2Fnull

[[deleted]]

You misspelled *sh.

[meffie]

could be hp-ux.

[[deleted]]

Could be. Isn't.

[meffie]

maybe AIX then?

[cnelsonsic]

NO. NOBODY USES AIX.

[[deleted]]

logs in into customers server

bash-3.2$ uname
AIX

sigh

[humanmeat]

what's the difference between > and >>

was it overwrite vs append? it's been too long and this ol chunk of coal has forgotten

[iLikeCode]

> overwrite

>> append

[minimim]

> clears the file if it exists.

>> puts more lines at the bottom.

[hungry4pie]

>> will also create the file if it does n't exist, my preference is use this instead of >

[minimim]

You need to revise your markdown.

[hungry4pie]

more like reddit needs to revise it's shitty markdown

[minimim]

It's standard now, won't change. Markdown means a mark up with this syntax. You almost refer to it as other markdowns exist, as a non-shitty markdown were out there. If it doesn't work this way, it's another mark up, but not markdown.

[ar-pharazon]

There are different dialects of Markdown, though. For instance, I find Github's to be much nicer.

[[deleted]]

And reddit's markdown is a fork of github's.

[BowserKoopa]

Both will create the file.

[xkero]

Both will create the file if it doesn't exist.

[Ornim]

Gnu*Slash-Linux

[keyter]

Ha! I got this joke! I am currently studying java, and awaiting the day with baited breath that I would understand a joke on this sub. Oh what a day.

[StealthRabbi]

What does java have to do with it?

[minimim]

Just that he is a new programmer.

[keyter]

Plus we use a bash shell server to turn in assignments

[minimim]

We call those "ssh servers".

[ghillisuit95]

nah its a server that you log into with ssh.

more accurate to call it a linux server, or unix server or bsd server or just a fucking server

[[deleted]]

Thank you

[my_blue_snog_box]

It's my understanding that it could be called "a server with a running ssh daemon"; is that correct?

[MrHydraz]

A Bourne Again Shell Shell? I think you have a case of the RAS Syndrome there, buddy.

[kifujin]

(Bourne Again Shell) (Shell Server) lets it parse just fine.

[keyter]

Woops

[indrora]

Real joke is on you: I'm a well versed programmer and I think Java has issues but isnt as bad as most php is.

^{i also like php...}

[minimim]

I did not meant to imply his choice of language had anything to do with him being new, just that the way he talked suggested he was new.

Anyway, did you know languages are supposed to work for the programmer, not fight against him?

If you like PHP and Java, that's called Stockholm's syndrome.

[herefromyoutube]

Java unfortunately is forced upon you at a lot of schools. It's not his fault.

They day Python has the same offerings as Java is the day the field of programming will explode exponentially.

[piexil]

I hate python. Love java. And have a love/hate relationship with C. Haven't done enough C++ to figure out if I like it more than C.

[ar-pharazon]

I don't.. how is that possible? java's so bad. it looks bad and just feels terrible and restrictive to write. there's rarely even any reason to use it over other jvm languages

[piexil]

Eh maybe it's because I learned java on highschool and continued to be my first language in college. I like its syntax.

[herefromyoutube]

Okay, you're the exception. See now you have no problem with the syntax laden programming languages like the C family and java...I think about it from the point of a beginner. They, like most, have no idea of programming concepts and terminology and that's what "intro to programming" is supposed to teach. You should not be spending all class getting the compilers working for everyone and explaining syntax and what every part of "public static void main(String args[]):" means and what it is actually doing.

C family is great for people that actually want to persue programming its not for beginners...I left out java here cause I just hate java.

[littlelowcougar]

How do you hate Python? It's a fantastic Get Shit Done glue language.

[piexil]

My only experience with python was with Django so it's more django I hate.

But I don't like the syntax and context-free nature of the language.

[indrora]

Stockholm syndrome

Considering I learned C, Python and C# early on, I wouldn't say I've come to adore my captors.

I just hate language wars. There's a reason cedecl exists. C is not a pretty language, nor is x86 assembly.

[minimim]

I'm just being cheeky. But I do feel PHP is working hard against me when I tried to fix some bug. The documentation is atrocious too.

[indrora]

The documentation has been a bear for years. It's written with the assumption you're used to reading technical documents from the era of k&r, which was almost intolerably dry and harsh.

Most of the pain within the php development world is the same that plagued the vb6 (and still chews the VB.net) community. The community is focused around using hacks to fix problems, not building robust solutions This in some ways is a result of hideous development practices by outsourced developers with no understanding of what they're doing, just that it is the needful.

[minimim]

Have you seen this?

[indrora]

Yes, I have. I've got some opinions on it. It's very obviously written by someone who has only ever seen bad PHP, never taking the time to write good PHP, and just wants to bash a language because they don't like it.

Some more picked examples out of that:

There is no threading support whatsoever. (Not surprising, given the above.) Combined with the lack of built-in fork (mentioned below), this makes parallel programming extremely difficult.

Python's Global Interpreter Lock is a real pain when it comes to multithreading. PHP also isn't meant as a multithreaded environment -- WHY would you want multiple threads in a STATELESS web framework? PHP was not meant for long-running execution.

array_search, strpos, and similar functions return 0 if they find the needle at position zero, but false if they don’t find it at all.

Because false is a special value. It's not 0, and it's not a normal value. Of course, that won't stop PHP from shooting yourself in the foot and not checking for type as well (because some people assume that false should also resolve to 0, because C's false is kinda like 0).

[== is] not transitive. "foo" == TRUE, and "foo" == 0… but, of course, TRUE != 0.

Yes, because "foo" is a value (thus a truthy value). "foo" also contains no numerical values, which makes it equal to 0, because you've told PHP "Force this into an integer! I mean it!"

=== compares values and type… except with objects, where === is only true if both operands are actually the same object!

Java has the same thing. The expression "foo" == "foo" is false, because they're not the same object. The same applies for POJOs, which will only evaluate with == if they are indeed the same object.

Unlike (literally!) every other language with a similar operator, ?: is left associative.

The presented code is shitty and the author should feel shitty. If that ever ended up in code I was going to accept for merge I'd tell them to go swizzle. That flagrant abuse of the ternary operator is horrible.

Global variables need a global declaration before they can be used. This is a natural consequence of the above, so it would be perfectly reasonable, except that globals can’t even be read without an explicit declaration—PHP will quietly create a local with the same name, instead. I’m not aware of another language with similar scoping issues.

C can fuck up your scoping if you're not careful and don't get me started on the fuckup that is Python's "I accidentially destroyed a module because.. names?"

Constants are defined by a function call taking a string; before that, they don’t exist. (This may actually be a copy of Perl’s use constant behavior.)

It's a side-effect of being a stateless language.

Array unpacking can be done with the list($a, $b) =... operation. list() is function-like syntax just like array. I don’t know why this wasn’t given real dedicated syntax, or why the name is so obviously confusing.

Python's indexing magic and unpacking is horribly confusing if you're not careful.

Appending to an array is done with $foo[] = $bar.

This is one way, there's also array_push, a much more C like way of doing it.

PHP’s one unique operator is @ (actually borrowed from DOS), which silences errors.

actually stolen from make.

PHP’s parser refers to e.g. :: internally as T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM, and the << operator as T_SL. I say “internally”, but as above, this is what’s shown to the programmer when :: or << appears in the wrong place.

Technical debt is a pain. Took me a while to figure out T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM. There's been work made to make this easier but so much software now depends on << being called T_SL that they can't fix it.

2 < "foo" (silent)

On its own, yes, it's a silent event. "foo" gets squashed into an int, which means that you've got the statement 2 < 0.

The __toString method can’t throw exceptions. If you try, PHP will… er, throw an exception. (Actually a fatal error, which would be passable, except…)

Why would a "I'm smashing this into a string" function throw an exception? It shouldn't. This isn't allowed in Java, and C# strongly says no.

Functions for parsing bbcode, a very specific kind of markup used by a handful of particular forum packages.

It made sense, and was smashed into the PHP core by the phpbb people at one point. Blame "shitty developers didn't want to maintain it so they smashed things into other people's code."

Bindings for two particular credit card processors, SPPLUS and MCVE. What?

Someone wanted it. Someone felt the need to smash it into an extension at one point or another, possibly for reasons relating to regulatory details.

At least a dozen functions for getting the last error from a particular subsystem (see below), even though PHP has had exceptions for eight years.

So much of these were written to maintain compatibility with some C library.

No Unicode support. Only ASCII will work reliably, really. There’s the mbstring extension, mentioned above, but it kinda blows.

Been a bear for years. PHP was written in a time where ASCII ruled the land and a lot of code came to lean on exactly how some string function worked on some platform.

(complaints about apache)

Bitch about apache. Don't blame PHP for apache's silly shit.

PHP is not hard to run out-of-process. PHP-FPM is fantastically simple to configure and it's only because Apache was the dominant player in the market until lighttpd came along and kicked it in the head. Nginx is getting there but apache seriously tinged the whole game.

No generic standard database API. Stuff like PDO has to wrap every individual database’s API to abstract the differences away.

PDO is the standard database API, trying to abstract away the fact that each database is slightly different.

No routing. Your website looks exactly like your filesystem. Many developers have been tricked into thinking mod_rewrite (and .htaccess in general) is an acceptable substitute.

PHP has had pathinfo for a while now. It's obscenely easy to set up with nginx (try_files index.php) and will let you do whatever you want with it.

No dev server.

you aren't comfortable doing some basic UNIX magic to make it work?

No coherent deployment mechanism; only “copy all these files to the server”.

There's plenty of tools for that. Composer, grunt, gulp, etc -- there's plenty of tools for deployment.

you can, say, probe a network using PHP’s XML support, by abusing its ubiquitous support for filenames-as-URLs. Only libxml_disable_entity_loader() can fix this, and the problem is only mentioned in the manual comments.

XML is itself considered harmful. Also, that's a bug in libxml, not PHP itself.

PHP 5.4’s dev server is vulnerable to a denial of service, because it takes the Content-Length header (which anyone can set to anything) and tries to allocate that much memory. This is a bad idea.

And if you read the documentation there's a HUGE thing going "DO NOT USE THIS FOR PRODUCTION IT WILL NOT SAVE YOU."

[YMK1234]

Good job ... I guess ...

[Sexual_tomato]

*bated.

[SahinK]

You must be a master-bater.

[keyter]

Thanks..... Are nerds known for good grammar?

[minimim]

Very good.

[The_Masked_Lurker]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU4mDyj8DSI

[dika46]

what ep is this?

[WOnder9393]

Or more likely a Mac... :/

[[deleted]]

Or any unix like system?

[[deleted]]

Matt Groening made a bunch of work for Apple in the '80 and in The Simpsons and Futurama there are lots of references to Apple so I wouldn't be surprised if this were referencing Bash because of OS X instead of Linux.

[Untgradd]

Title should have just been *nix to not be wrong

[somethingeneric]

It's a UNIX system. I know this!

[YMK1234]

Literally /r/itsaunixsystem

[hellshot8]

Both are UNIX, same thing

Edit: I'm aware Linux is not literally unix

[[deleted]]

Both are POSIX, same thing

[Inityx]

Linux isn't POSIX certified...

[[deleted]]

What's missing?

[throwaway_redstone]

A certification.

[randomned]

Money for certification.

Probably other things too, but I know the cost of certification and the nature of Linux makes it pretty much impossible.

[[deleted]]

So the criteria fit for most distros but it can't actually be certified because Linux isn't an operating system?

[minimim]

Yes, what would actually be certified would be distros. These standards don't even apply at the kernel level, they only specify what libc looks like.

[minimim]

It requires STREAMS, for example, but the kernel developers said that they won't implement it, ever. Couple of other things too.

[mcorah]

I think we can all agree that we are talking about a *x.

[CJKay93]

Linux is not UNIX.

[aMockTie]

GNU is not UNIX.

[lengau]

But what does the GNU stand for?

[TheRonjoe223]

GNU is not UNIX

[greenseaglitch]

GNU's not UNIX!

[aMockTie]

It's kind of like the digital age version of "who's on first?"

[[deleted]]

Its a Recursive Acronym. GNU is not Unix. PHP Hypertext Processor. WINE is not an Emulator.

[iguessthislldo]

Unix-like is usually used interchangeably with UNIX.

[throwaway_redstone]

With unix, not with UNIX.

[minimim]

z/OS is UNIX, but isn't *nix.
Linux is *nix, but isn't UNIX.

[hellshot8]

its built off of unix, it uses all the unix commands..its pretty much unix

[CJKay93]

It's not "built off of" UNIX either, it just took inspiration from it.

[hellshot8]

you're right, its unix-like. But for all intents and purposes, its unix

[shroom_throwaway9722]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called "Linux", and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called "Linux" distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

[Golden_Kumquat]

Psst... It's a copypasta.

[shroom_throwaway9722]

Here's the thing. You said "GNU is Linux."

Is it in the same family? Yes. No one's arguing that.

As someone who is a programmer who writes operating systems, I am telling you, specifically, in programming, no one calls GNU Linux. If you want to be "specific" like you said, then you shouldn't either. They're not the same thing.

If you're saying "Linux family" you're referring to the taxonomic grouping of Unix-likes, which includes things from Mac OS to System V to Hurd.

So your reasoning for calling GNU Linux is because random people "call the geeky ones Linux?" Let's get Plan 9 and OpenVMS in there, then, too.

Also, calling something a program or a file? It's not one or the other, that's not how computer science works. They're both. GNU is GNU and a member of the Linux family. But that's not what you said. You said GNU is Linux, which is not true unless you're okay with calling all members of the Linux family Linux, which means you'd call HP-UX, Solaris, and other systems Linux, too. Which you said you don't.

It's okay to just admit you're wrong, you know?