Re: [dev] stderr: unnecessary?

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 12:59:45PM -0400, Alex Puterbaugh wrote:
>Kris, Kris, Kris...
>
>So no one in the world ever reads files bigger than 2GB? That's a
>silly notion. You can't design an API based on what you think a
>programmer is _most likely_ to need, without consideration to other
>scenarios. At least not if you want it to be scalable enough to be
>relevant in a few years. The UNIX people understand that, and that's
>why UNIX-like operating systems are still in use after decades.
>
>As for the OP: People have given a few good reasons why stderr is
>useful, and that's why it's around. Couldn't have said it better
>myself.

Of course people read *files* bigger than two GB. That's why
file offsets are 64bit values. The size of a single *read* is
limited to 2GB. This is not a major obstacle. Even if it were
commonplace for a program to read that much data into memory at
once (which it is most certainly not), it would not be a major
issue to split it into multiple reads.

-- 
Kris Maglione
If the programmer can simulate a construct faster than a compiler can
implement the construct itself, then the compiler writer has blown it
badly.
	--Guy Steele