I’ve uploaded a minor bugfix to my applelist.pl script, which I first announced on this Nov. 25, 2003 post. Line 154 has been changed from
system "./getlinks.pl $daypage $dayDir ".*.txt$"";
to
system "\"./getlinks.pl\" \"$daypage\" \"$dayDir\" \".*\.txt$\"";
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was bitten by the bug that often hits Unix scriptwriters getting used to the “Mac Way”: the annoying habit of real users to put spaces in their directory names. (Real users like me.)
In Unix scripting, spaces are often delimiters between arguments. If you have a script that takes two arguments, the first being a full path and the second being something else, and you pass in a full path not enclosed in quotes as that first argument, the script will parse everything after the first space it finds in that path as the second argument. Ugh.
When you’re working directly in Terminal, using things like tab completion or dragging in file/folders to get their paths, the OS handles this sort of thing for you by escaping out the spaces like this:
My\ HD/My\ Folder/
but you don’t want to do that sort of find and replace in your paths, and quotes are easier, anyway.
Second item of the day: people have been grumbling for a while now on the xcode-users list, which is the replacement list for projectbuilder-users in the same way that Xcode is the replacement for Project Builder (whose corresponding Apple Web site link now points to Xcode – is that a sign, or what?), that it does not yet have an entry in Apple’s list search page.
Now, there isn’t that much content in the list yet, just three months worth, but esp. considering that this is Xcode’s teething period, it’s nice to be able to search for specific problems you’re having or issues you’re facing. So I’m proud to say my applelist.pl script is the only way currently to enable such a search! Yes, yes, I know this state of affairs won’t last, but it’s nice to have bragging rights for a little while, eh?
Weaponized Fluff 