Re: Proposal: Add option to add dates to write(1)

[Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> Part of the reason I mentioned (a) is that write is writing to a
>> tty, whereas environments are attached to processes;
> That's a distinction without a difference.

I don't think so.  What if multiple processes are associated with the
tty (for whatever value of "associated with" you end up using) and they
have different values in their environments?  That's one of the places
"ill-defined" can come from.

What if the processes associated with the tty are owned by a different
user from the one logged in on that tty?

What if the user logged in on that tty does not own any processes on
the tty?  ...does not own any processes on the system at all?  (Either
one can happen; consider "exec su".)

> Users own processes, and only one user is logged in to any terminal.
> who(1) manages to report who's on what terminal.

Yes, but users don't have environments; processes do.

> I grant maybe using the user's environment to express a preference to
> another process wasn't the brightest idea.

Yeah...I haven't called that out specifically because I don't really
have anything to suggest that I think is much better.

> Are you opposed to the notion that the recipient be able to express a
> preference for the write(1) message date format, or are you really
> convinced it's technically infeasible or unreliable?

No and no.  I think it's a very sane thing to want.  I'm not convinced
it's infeasible; I just haven't come up with a way of doing it that I
consider reasonably sane - they all have issues, issues which I
consider severe enough to make them nonstarters.  But "I haven't come
up with a way" is a very far cry from "I believe there is no way".

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