Re: Spaces in File name Handling

[alupu]

Hi Paul,

Doug McIlroy's piece;  hope you'll enjoy and find hidden meanings.

The UNIX and the Echo
There dwelt in the land of Medford the UNIX, a fair maid whom savants traveled 
far to 
admire. Dazzled by her purity, all sought to espouse her, one for her grace, 
another for 
her polished civility, yet another for her agility in performing exacting tasks 
seldom 
accomplished even in much richer lands. So large of heart and accommodating of 
nature 
was she that the UNIX adopted all but the most insufferably rich of suitors. 
Soon many 
offspring grew and prospered and spread to the ends of the earth.
      Nature herself smiled and answered to the UNIX more eagerly than to other 
mortal beings. Humbler folk, who knew little of more courtly manners, delighted 
in her 
echo, so precise and crystal clear they scarce believed she could be answered 
by the same 
rocks and woods that so garbled their own shouts into the wilderness. And the 
compliant 
UNIX obliged with perfect echoes of whatever she was asked. When one snooty 
ee128 
student asked the UNIX, ‘Echo nothing’, the UNIX obligingly opened her mouth, 
echoed 
nothing, and closed it again.
‘Whatever do you mean,’ another spoiled ee128 youth demanded, ‘opening your 
mouth 
like that? Henceforth never open your mouth when you are supposed to echo 
nothing!’ 
And the UNIX obliged.
      ‘But I want a perfect performance, even when you echo nothing,’ pleaded 
the 
spoiled student,’ and no perfect echoes can come from a closed mouth.’ Not 
wishing to 
offend either one, the UNIX agreed to say different nothings for the snooty 
student and 
the spoiled student. She called the sensitive nothing ‘\n.’
        Yet now when she said ‘\n,’ she was really not saying nothing so she 
had to open 
her mouth twice, once to say ‘\n,’ and once to say nothing, and so she did not 
please the 
spoiled student who said forthwith, ‘The \n sounds like a perfect nothing to 
me, but the 
second one ruins it. I want you to take back one of them.’ So the UJIX, who not 
abide 
offending, agreed to undo some echoes, and called that ‘\c.’ Now the spoiled 
student 
could hear a perfect echo of nothing by asking for ‘\n’ and ‘\c.’ together. But 
they say 
that he died of a surfeit of notion before he ever heard one. 

Good luck,
-- Alex