Re: iostat

[Richard E Maine <Richard dot Maine at nasa dot gov>]

On Aug 23, 2006, at 9:34 AM, Steve Kargl wrote:

> IOSTAT is a value.  That value needs IMNSHO to be unique across
> all OS's.

I guess I don't see why the commonality of that value across  
operating systems is particularly important. I can see why it might  
be nice, but it isn't very high on my list of important things - not  
anywhere near as high as the importance of having the value encode  
something useful. The value sure is not portable across different  
compilers, even on the same OS.

> > Implementing Erik's suggestion would allow those who care to
> > determine the appropriate message on their own.
>
> I think that that is an ugly solution.  Telling a Fortran programmer
> (who may have no C language experience) to compile and run a C
> code or look in errno.h to translate a number into a more meaningful
> message seems worse than just signalling failure.

You are kidding, right? If you are serious, then I guess we just have  
hugely different value judgments here because I find it hard to  
disagree more. Although both options are far from ideal, I'd take the  
hard-to-interpret number over "failed - you guess why" any day.  By a  
lot. At least with the number, the poor user can go ask someone else  
for help interpreting it. Indeed, I see users asking exactly that  
quite regularly. With "open failed - you guess why", the user is just  
plain going to be out of luck. As the poor user, try asking for help  
with that one somewhere like comp.lang.fortran... and lots of luck,  
as you would need it.

I have trouble picturing why you would think that it is ok to  
dispense with giving any information at all, yet it is important to  
have the same non-information on all operating systems. You and I  
must have some pretty basic differences in outlook somewhere.

Somewhat reminds me of an HP printer I made the mistake of having our  
branch buy a few years ago. Apparently someone at HP decided that the  
printer error messages on the small LED displays of printers in the  
previous series were too cryptic and confusing to users. So they took  
the display off. All you have now is a red light that indicates  
"something is wrong". You can't tell whether there is a paper jam,  
something wrong with the data sent to the printer, a network  
communication problem, the printer failing some internal self test,  
or maybe it just being out of paper. The sysadmin now gets regular  
calls that turn out to be because the printer is out of paper. HP  
fixed that horrible mistake in the next series, but we are stuck with  
the one we bought. At times I've been tempted to "accidentally" drop  
it down the stairs or something. I *DESPISE* that printer.

--
Richard Maine                |  Good judgment comes from experience;
Richard.Maine@nasa.gov       |  experience comes from bad judgment.
                            |        -- Mark Twain