>> What I'm saying is that "Unix" isn't a single coherant design. It's 
>> 50,000 random people all doing their own seperate thing, and expecting 
>> the result to actually function. Which, almost unbelievably, it does. 
>> But *damn* is it messy...
> 
> When you're writing a single, simple tool, with well defined inputs and 
> outputs, it's much easier to make it work *no matter what*.  When each 
> tool is maintained by a separate group of people, they may not share the 
> same design ideology, but they're much more likely to operate correctly 
> under unexpected circumstances.
> 
> So the fact that it works as often as it does shouldn't really surprise 
> anyone.

Hooooookay then... let me see...

http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?ls

So the program to "list the contents of a folder" has 59 seperate 
command-line options?

And what do these options do? Well, some of them control which fields to 
show or not show. Some control which way to sort the list. Some control 
which files to show/hide. Some control various formatting options 
(escape filenames, use colour, grid or column view).

I just love the way they interact:

   -lct: Show ctime, sort by ctime.
   -lc:  Show ctime, sort by name.
   -c:   Hide ctime, Sort by ctime.

What the hell??

So, rather than having options to select individual fields to show or 
hide, and another option specifying which field to sort by, we have this 
ad-hoc *mess* of haphazardly interacting command switches that you have 
to spend 20 minutes studying the manpage to decode the interactions for?

In what universe is this a "simple tool" with "well defined inputs and 
outputs"?

Also: autoconf exists. Need I say more?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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