abathur (u/abathur) - Readit News

abathur commented on Bash Strict Mode (2014) redsymbol.net/articles/un... · Posted by u/dcminter

> Just from the mailing list thread size alone, it looks like you put quite a lot of work into it.

The patch itself was pretty simple, it's just that the community argued a lot about this feature even though I validated the idea in the mailing list before I even cloned the repository. I remember arguing with one person for days only to learn later he hadn't even read the code I sent.

> I wasn't readily able to find where the discussion broke down

Somewhere around here:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2024-05/msg00352...

The maintainer was pretty nice, he was just looking for community consensus.

> I see that there's a -p <path> flag in bash 5.3

That's the solution the maintainer favored back then:

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2024-05/msg00333...

https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2024-05/msg00337...

So in the end it did make it into bash in some form. It's not very ergonomic by default but that can be fixed by wrapping it in an alias or function. Good enough.

Looks like 5.3 was released just over a month ago too so pretty recent. I'm gonna update and start using it right away. Thanks, Chet Ramey!

abathur · 2 days ago

Chet seems like good folks from everything I've seen.

abathur commented on Bash Strict Mode (2014) redsymbol.net/articles/un... · Posted by u/dcminter

matheusmoreira · 2 days ago

> do you mean something more or less like a separate search path

Exactly. I sent to the GNU Bash mailing list patches that implement literally this. It worked like this:

  # searches for the `some-module` file
  # in some separate PATH just for libraries
  # for example: ~/.local/share/bash/modules

  source -l some-module

At some point someone said this was a schizophrenic idea and I just left. Patches are still on the mailing list. I have no idea what the maintainer did with them.

abathur · 2 days ago

It seems reasonable to me. Sorry you got that reaction. Just from the mailing list thread size alone, it looks like you put quite a lot of work into it.

I wasn't readily able to find where the discussion broke down, but I see that there's a -p <path> flag in bash 5.3.

abathur commented on Bash Strict Mode (2014) redsymbol.net/articles/un... · Posted by u/dcminter

matheusmoreira · 3 days ago

This honestly should be the default for all scripts. There are so many little annoyances in bash that would make it great if they were changed and improved. Sadly there's just no changing certain things.

My number one wishlist feature was a simple library system. Essentially just let me source files by name by searching in some standard user location. I actually wrote and submitted patches for this but it just didn't work out. Maintained my own version for a while and it was nice but not enough to justify the maintenance burden. Bash's number one feature is being the historical default shell on virtually every Linux distribution, without that there's no point.

At least we've got shellcheck.

abathur · 3 days ago

When you say library system, do you mean something more or less like a separate search path and tools for managing it?

I've written a little about how we can more or less accomplish something like meaningfully-reusable shell libraries in the nix ecosystem. I think https://www.t-ravis.com/post/shell/the_missing_comprehensive... lays out the general idea but you can also pick through how my bashrc integrates libraries/modules (https://github.com/abathur/bashrc.nix).

(I'm just dropping these in bin, since that works with existing search path for source. Not ideal, but the generally explicit nature of dependencies in nix minimizes how much things can leak where they aren't meant to go.)

abathur commented on Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study kcl.ac.uk/news/toothpaste... · Posted by u/sohkamyung

inglor_cz · 11 days ago

It was pretty rare even among medieval kings to live to be 70.

The first English king to be definitely alive on their 70th birthday (though no longer "in office") was Philip of Spain (jure uxoris) in 1597, so not a medieval king. That is Early Modern Age.

Elizabeth I. didn't make it, though barely, and so the next to reach 70 was George II. in November 1753! Only since the second half of the 18th century is it common for British monarchs to reach their seventies.

Richard Cromwell lived to be 85, but he was never a king, only Lord Protector.

Edgar Aetheling lived to be 73, but he was never king either, due to certain William arriving en force from Normandy.

abathur · 11 days ago

Was this meant for someone else?

I did not dispute that this was likely rare in medieval Europe (for the same reason you cite).

abathur commented on Toothpaste made with keratin may protect and repair damaged teeth: study kcl.ac.uk/news/toothpaste... · Posted by u/sohkamyung

pcthrowaway · 11 days ago

I was under the impression living to 70 would have been very rare in, say, 1100 CE

abathur · 11 days ago

Not deeply knowledgeable here but imagine this depended quite a bit on where you were living in 1100 CE.

I think it was fairly rare in Europe, but IDK how well those numbers capture what was common for the majority of the human population living elsewhere.

abathur commented on Job-seekers are dodging AI interviewers fortune.com/2025/08/03/ai... · Posted by u/robtherobber

mcv · 23 days ago

This is in fact one of my two requirements when interviewing: I want to hear the candidate say "I don't know" to a question. The other is that I want to hear them talk passionately about some project they once did. Bullshitting is an immediate fail.

abathur · 23 days ago

You sound incisive :)

It's hard in the moment, but we'd do well to appreciate that not passing a myopic screen is likely a blessing.

abathur commented on Death by AI davebarry.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/ano-ther

thih9 · a month ago

There is no indication that their actual customers want that and that it would benefit the business and their customers long term. It might as well be a bad location for the above for some reason.

abathur · a month ago

It's an outdoor seating counter serve kind of place, so yeah :)

abathur commented on Death by AI davebarry.substack.com/p/... · Posted by u/ano-ther

abathur · a month ago

A popular local spot has a summary on google maps that says:

Vibrant watering hole with drinks & po' boys, as well as a jukebox, pool & electronic darts.

It doesn't serve po' boys, have a jukebox (though the playlists are impeccable), have pool, or have electronic darts. (It also doesn't really have drinks in the way this implies. It's got beer and a few canned options. No cocktails or mixed drinks.)

They got a catty one-star review a month ago for having a misleading description by someone who really wanted to play pool or darts.

I'm sure the owner reported it. I reported it. I imagine other visitors have as well. At least a month on, it's still there.

abathur commented on Curate your shell history esham.io/2025/05/shell-hi... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

mzs · 3 months ago

Just put them in files, like month per machine/mpount per shell (bash, csh, etc). Then the shell will only load the current month's history. You can use grep of the files and easily narrow down what to search in.

abathur · 3 months ago

Sure! Something date-based is a simple way to handle perpetual storage while keeping the active history set from over-growing.

I did anything at all because the default shell profiles in macOS can cause history loss, and I'd found my last straw. I put them in sqlite because--if I was bothering to build something bespoke--I wanted to track more command-time context to build tooling around later. (Including to play with some ~curation ideas.)

I might have decided to just use Atuin if it existed at the time, but I did it three years and change before its first release. (There were maybe 5 or 6 barely-used public examples of this idea on GH at the time, but none tracked everything I wanted among other issues.)

abathur commented on Curate your shell history esham.io/2025/05/shell-hi... · Posted by u/todsacerdoti

loeg · 3 months ago

Instantaneous. bash might just be slow here; I'm using zsh.

  $ time zsh -i -c 'exit'
  zsh -i -c 'exit'  0.03s user 0.02s system 100% cpu 0.055 total

abathur · 3 months ago

Are you sure it's loading history in there? My .zsh_history isn't completely empty, and when I run the same with 'history' swapped for 'exit' it doesn't print anything. (But this might have something to do with macOS default shell profile stuff.)