[GTALUG] Ubuntu (or debian): apt-get auto-remove?

[David Mason]

On 17 August 2015 at 01:42, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:

> | From: Chris F.A. Johnson <chris at cfajohnson.com>
>
> |     Best practice is not to use it at all.
> |
> |    <http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/105>
>

Sorry, late to this thread, but that page doesn't refer to -u


> Thanks.  Useful.  I respectfully disagree with the conclusion.
>
> | > "set -u" tells the shell to treat a reference to an undefined
> | > parameter as an error.  It will make no difference in this script.
> | > Until the script evolves more complexity.
> |
> |    There's no point to using set -u after a script has been debugged.
>
> The sad fact is that I don't know when I've gotten rid of the last bug
> in a script.
>

I don't know when I've gotten the last bug in *any* language (of course
I've only been programming for 44 years, so maybe I'll get to that point
sometime :-).

The only reason I can even *imagine* turning it off after "debugging" would
be a claim for "efficiency".  And to suggest that "the overhead of having
the bash interpreter check this" is material is misguided (see Hugh's
quotes from Tony Hoare).  There are *very*, *very* few programs that need
that kind of micro-efficiency, which is why I virtually never program in C
or C++ anymore -- safety is so much more important.

../Dave
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20150817/76eba4a0/attachment.html>