On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Paul Makepeace wrote:
> That was the impression I got. From the point of view of someone who
> learns by example simply scattering lots of examples around would('ve)
> help(ed) immensely, even if the syntax isn't yet fully described.
That is what I tried to do in the book.
> Another source of confusion for me is the terminology of "lsearch".
This was inherited from Smail 3. But nobody has previously objected. :-)
> To me that says "linear search", a description of _how_ the file is
> searched, not the file _type_. Whereas lsearch's peers, cdb, nis, etc
> describe the file/source type.
If you think that way, a file that can be linearly searched *is* a file
of a certain type, is it not? :-)
This is just a problem of perception, I'm afraid. Now, I know that in
Unix, a file is a file is a file. So my mental emphasis is on how it is
searched rather than thinking of a file "type". You could try lsearching
a file build by cdb - it probably wouldn't find anything, but it would
be possible. Obviously, your perception is different. This is what makes
communication hard...
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
