Re: [Coreutils-announce] coreutils-5.0.1 released

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

> > Is NEWS-OS 4.2R something you care about?  Make variables
> 
> Do people still use that OS?

Sony NEWS-OS 4.2R was released in 1992, so I highly doubt it.
However, NEWS-OS 4.2.1a+ (released 1995) is probably still in use by a
diehard or two, since it was Sony's last BSD release and some people
didn't want to switch to SVR4.2 when Sony did.  I don't know whether
it had that bug.

> I seem to remember that NEWS-OS (Sony?) was nearly nonexistent
> 8 or 10 years ago.

The last Sony NEWS-OS release was 6.1.2, in 1996.  The last unofficial
patch from Sony is dated May 2000.  Some people in Japan still run
NEWS-OS, though I think it's more of a hobbyist-with-used-equipment
crowd now.

> They were also responsible for my writing some horrible hack wrt
> EXIT_FAILURE or EXIT_SUCCESS.  On that system (maybe not the same
> release), one of those was defined to the wrong value!

Sorry about that.  I was the one who sent you that bug report, lo
these many years ago.  I had a NEWS-OS box on my desk around 1990,
running Sony NEWS-OS 4.0C.  It defined EXIT_FAILURE to 0.  But that
bug is long dead.

I wouldn't bother with worrying about leading-underscore names, unless
someone real (i.e. not in a computer museum) reports a bug.