Re: pkill.c warn when "no such process"

#1 (**permalink**) 02-22-2008, 02:40 PM

On Fri, Feb 22, 2008 at 6:59 AM, Heinrich Rebehn
<rebehn@ant.uni-bremen.de> wrote:
>
> Ted Unangst wrote:
> > On 2/21/08, Heinrich Rebehn <rebehn@ant.uni-bremen.de> wrote:
> >> $ rm xxxx.*
> >> rm: xxxx.*: No such file or directory
> >> Who says it's an error ? rm tried to delete all (in this case, none)
> >> files matched.
> >>
> >> Would you like to check the return status after every command issued
> >> just to rule out typos?
> >
> > For commands that are given a specific, identifiable target, no. For
> > commands that are provided a pattern, yes.
> >
> > There is a difference between commands like kill and pkill. By
> > providing a single pid to kill, you are indicating that you know
> > exactly which process you want killed. The fact that you know its
> > identity is ample evidence to imply that you know it exists. pkill
> > takes a pattern, implying that you do not know which particular
> > process you want killed. There is no evidence that you even know a
> > matching process exists, so pkill should not report an error.
> >
>
> I do not agree with you. But since others already stated that
> compatibility with Linux and Solaris is more important, it seems that
> there is no point in discussing this any further.
> Thank you all for sharing your opinions :-)
>

being compatible is not the point, behaving like a unix system is.

iru

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