[H-GEN] Hella Lua!

[Russell Stuart]

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 14:23 +1000, Greg Black wrote:
> I'm not having a go at Russell here, but this seems like an
> invitation to make a comment:
> 
>     If you see your tools making a mess of your data (and if
>     your data is of any consequence to you), then it's time to
>     either arrange to get the tool fixed or to move to another
>     tool without the breakage.  From where I'm standing, any
>     case of "countless corrupted backups" is a clear indicator
>     that something needs to change.

> FWIW, I stopped using cpio on any platform in the late 1980s.
> It has always been a fragile tool and better alternatives have
> been available for ages.  (On some platforms, of course, cpio is
> just an alternate name for the better alternatives which know to
> honour cpio options when invoked as cpio rather than as pax or
> tar.)

And I stopped using it some time ago as well.  However,
none of the obvious alternatives (pax, cp, tar) work
as backup programs - ie programs that copy a line file
system to another.  Pax, in particular can't handle
long file names.  The other two exit with a non-zero
exit status if a file is modified while they copy it.
That is the "right" behaviour for most applications - 
but not mine.

The "Halleluiah" was because after 10 years I was about
to give up and write, of all things, a file system copy
program.  The thought of having to write a file copy 
program under 'nix was so absurd I have tried not to do
it for years.  It is actually on my "todo" list, and
just before starting I took one last look at cpio's
change log.  At it happens even cpio needs some patches
for my application - but I believe I have them lying
around somewhere.

> And, even though I'm not having a go at Russell, I must say that
> it took me two tries to parse the Subject header:

Hmmm.  And while I am not having a go at Greg, this is
what I sent in another email:

On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 14:04 +1000, Russell Stuart wrote: 
> On Tue, 2006-03-28 at 13:55 +1000, somebody at yyy.com wrote:
> > Ras I'm impressed!   
> > 
> > Not so much by the cpio bug, but by the fact that you can spell
> > hellaluelia (or whatever)
> > 
> > That word falls into the same category as liaise, premises and mnemonic,
> > being words that almost no one can spell. (certainly no one under 25!)
> > 
> > PS. Thanks for your responses on the timezone stuff.
> 
> You are dead wrong - I had, and still have no idea 
> how to spell Hallelujah.  I do know it translates
> to "Praise the Lord", so I typed that phrase into
> Google.
> 
> I sent the same email to the Humbug list.  There
> are any number of professional nit pickers on that
> list, so I went to the trouble looking it up.  After
> looking it up, I naturally got distracted by all the
> nice hits google gave me and promptly forgot to 
> change the hacked up attempt I had made at spelling 
> it in the first place.  So I managed to embarrass
> myself and waste time looking up the spelling of a
> word I'll probably never use again.