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What earlier implementations? The initial import of /bin/kill into the NetBSD source-tree accepted signal names and that was 21 years and 2 months ago. Same w
by fensipens 12y ago
What earlier implementations? The initial import of /bin/kill into the NetBSD source-tree accepted signal names and that was 21 years and 2 months ago. Same with FreeBSD and their commit message even implies that signal names were allowed in the original 4.4BSD-Lite source.
WRT shorter: Magic numbers don't just suck in programming.
- mturmon 12y ago21 years ago was 1993. I learned Unix a decade before that. 7th Edition AT&T Unix did not allow signal names (http://plan9.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/v7vol1.pdf http://plan9.bell-labs.com/7thEdMan/v7vol1.pdf, search for "extreme prejudice" -- I still remember many of the little gags in the early manpages). That was a mainstream release in the mid-1980s. Even the basic utilities like kill(1) were incompatible back then, so if you worked on both BSD and AT&T systems, it was easier to use the compatible subset. * Regarding magic numbers: in general, yes, to be avoided. But my usual use of kill -9 is in exasperation, from the command line, and clarity for others is not a priority. I admit, in a script, kill -HUP is to be preferred to kill -1. But even in a script, I'd say kill -9. This usage thing seems to be complex.