5 ms·

Unix Error Messages (joke)

60 points by MrXOR 8y ago

zatkin 8y ago
How many of these actually output what they say they output when run on a modern variant of UNIX?
- segfaultbuserr 8y ago
  Almost none. Early Unix uses a rather informal style to report errors, like those debug messages written by a casual programmer. Nowadays, at least the GNU toolchain uses a more rigorous style to report errors formally. BSD's messages are more concise, but still have more details. e.g, compare %make love Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop. and (shell doesn't matter here, GNU make matters) sh-4.4$ make love make: *** No rule to make target 'love'. Stop. There's still a funny one, though. In the old Unix, we had % ar m God ar: God does not exist But now, $ ar m God ar: creating God
  - est31 8y ago
    This still works: # whatis love love: nothing appropriate.
- sirn 8y ago
  Quite a few if you run *BSD! This is on FreeBSD 12.0-STABLE (and use `csh` as noted in the first line). These still works: % "How poorly would you rate the Unix (so-called) user interface? Unmatched '"'. % ^How did the sex change^ operation go? Modifier failed. % If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have? Too many ('s. % make love make: don't know how to make love. Stop % got a light? got: No match. % man: why did you get a divorce? man:: Too many arguments. % \(- (-: Command not found. No longer works. % rm congressional-ethics rm: congressional-ethics: No such file or directory % ar m God ar: warning: God: no such file % [where is Jimmy Hoffa? [where: No match. % sleep with me usage: sleep seconds % ^What is saccharine? Modifier failed. % sh $ PATH=pretending! /usr/bin/which sense $ drink <bottle; opener sh: cannot open bottle: No such file or directory sh: opener: not found $ mkdir matter; cat >matter sh: cannot create matter: Is a directory For a reference, csh in FreeBSD 12.0-STABLE is tcsh 6.20.00 from 2016[1] [1]: https://github.com/tcsh-org/tcsh/blob/master/Announce-6.20.00 https://github.com/tcsh-org/tcsh/blob/master/Announce-6.20.0...
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > cannot create matter: Is a directory Looks like sh is way ahead of the particle physicists on this one.
User23 8y ago
There was an old CD player called workbone that contributed to similar humor
dschuetz 8y ago
There was a "being silly" package for error messages, I believe, but I can't recall where exactly. While software usually offers a debug feature, I really like the idea that software also can have a silly mode, or similar, like Easter eggs which are triggered by a specific date. It takes away the seriousness of using a computer and lightens up the mood. Also good for motivation and morale.
xixixao 8y ago
How to avoid this in your software (applies to CLI but also messaging in GUIs): - Always wrap input, code, strings in some delimeters. - Always specify the kind of a thing custom name refers to. - Follow standard prose writing rules, like ending sentences with a period. So: File named "God" does not exist. Missing `)` character. While I was writing this mods took the submission down?
weinzierl 8y ago
Not a joke because it is intentional but I always found ssh's answer to an non-existent user hilarious: ssh user@host You don't exist, go away! Raw material for further jokes: head -c4 AnyJava.class | xxd -p cafebabe The more morbidly inclined AIX user might try this with tail on a coredump and will find deadbeef.
- yarosv 8y ago
  >ssh user@host >You don't exist, go away! I have never seen that. I always get: "Permission denied" of some sort.
koonsolo 8y ago
Reminders of the following joke (the most geekiest joke I ever saw): chown -R us ./base
rv-de 8y ago
I accidentally gave $ ar m God a try on bash: ar: creating God That's at least more proactive compared to cshell's: ar: God does not exist
- majewsky 8y ago
  That's got nothing to do with bash vs csh, just with ancient ar vs. current ar. If you look in the pwd after your ar invocation, you will indeed see a file named God, and you will feel a bit weary as you rm God

60 points by MrXOR 8y ago

zatkin 8y ago

How many of these actually output what they say they output when run on a modern variant of UNIX?

segfaultbuserr 8y ago
Almost none. Early Unix uses a rather informal style to report errors, like those debug messages written by a casual programmer. Nowadays, at least the GNU toolchain uses a more rigorous style to report errors formally. BSD's messages are more concise, but still have more details. e.g, compare %make love Make: Don't know how to make love. Stop. and (shell doesn't matter here, GNU make matters) sh-4.4$ make love make: *** No rule to make target 'love'. Stop. There's still a funny one, though. In the old Unix, we had % ar m God ar: God does not exist But now, $ ar m God ar: creating God
- est31 8y ago
  This still works: # whatis love love: nothing appropriate.
sirn 8y ago
Quite a few if you run *BSD! This is on FreeBSD 12.0-STABLE (and use `csh` as noted in the first line). These still works: % "How poorly would you rate the Unix (so-called) user interface? Unmatched '"'. % ^How did the sex change^ operation go? Modifier failed. % If I had a ( for every $ Congress spent, what would I have? Too many ('s. % make love make: don't know how to make love. Stop % got a light? got: No match. % man: why did you get a divorce? man:: Too many arguments. % \(- (-: Command not found. No longer works. % rm congressional-ethics rm: congressional-ethics: No such file or directory % ar m God ar: warning: God: no such file % [where is Jimmy Hoffa? [where: No match. % sleep with me usage: sleep seconds % ^What is saccharine? Modifier failed. % sh $ PATH=pretending! /usr/bin/which sense $ drink <bottle; opener sh: cannot open bottle: No such file or directory sh: opener: not found $ mkdir matter; cat >matter sh: cannot create matter: Is a directory For a reference, csh in FreeBSD 12.0-STABLE is tcsh 6.20.00 from 2016[1] [1]: https://github.com/tcsh-org/tcsh/blob/master/Announce-6.20.00 https://github.com/tcsh-org/tcsh/blob/master/Announce-6.20.0...
- majewsky 8y ago
  > cannot create matter: Is a directory Looks like sh is way ahead of the particle physicists on this one.

User23 8y ago

There was an old CD player called workbone that contributed to similar humor

dschuetz 8y ago

There was a "being silly" package for error messages, I believe, but I can't recall where exactly. While software usually offers a debug feature, I really like the idea that software also can have a silly mode, or similar, like Easter eggs which are triggered by a specific date. It takes away the seriousness of using a computer and lightens up the mood. Also good for motivation and morale.

xixixao 8y ago

How to avoid this in your software (applies to CLI but also messaging in GUIs): - Always wrap input, code, strings in some delimeters. - Always specify the kind of a thing custom name refers to. - Follow standard prose writing rules, like ending sentences with a period. So: File named "God" does not exist. Missing `)` character. While I was writing this mods took the submission down?

weinzierl 8y ago

Not a joke because it is intentional but I always found ssh's answer to an non-existent user hilarious: ssh user@host You don't exist, go away! Raw material for further jokes: head -c4 AnyJava.class | xxd -p cafebabe The more morbidly inclined AIX user might try this with tail on a coredump and will find deadbeef.

yarosv 8y ago
>ssh user@host >You don't exist, go away! I have never seen that. I always get: "Permission denied" of some sort.

koonsolo 8y ago

Reminders of the following joke (the most geekiest joke I ever saw): chown -R us ./base

rv-de 8y ago

I accidentally gave $ ar m God a try on bash: ar: creating God That's at least more proactive compared to cshell's: ar: God does not exist

majewsky 8y ago
That's got nothing to do with bash vs csh, just with ancient ar vs. current ar. If you look in the pwd after your ar invocation, you will indeed see a file named God, and you will feel a bit weary as you rm God