On the command line, space is what separates each argument. If a path contains a space, you either have to quote the entire path, or use an escape character (e.g. the `` character in most shells, the backtick in Powershell because Microsoft is weird, or the character’s hexadecimal value), otherwise the path will be passed to the command as separate arguments. For example, cat hello world.txt would try to print the files hello and world.txt.
It is a good practice to minimize the character set used by filenames, and best to only use English alphanumeric characters and certain symbols like -, _, and .. Non-printable characters (like the lower half of ASCII), weird diacritics (like ő or ű), ligatures, or any characters that could be misinterpreted by a program should be avoided.
This is why byte-safe encodings, like base64 or percent-encoding, are important. Transmitting data directly as text runs the risk of mangling the characters because some program misinterpreted them.
but what does the command line matter for dates? sure every once in a while you’ll have to pass a date as an argument on the command line but I think usually that kind of data is handled by APIs without human intervention, so once these are set up properly, I don’t see the problem
<span style="color:#323232;">rsync -a "somedir" "somedir_backup_$(date)"
</span>
If the date command returns an RFC-3339-formatted string, the filename will contain a space. If, for example, you want to iterate over the files using for d in $(find…) and forget to set $IFS properly, it can cause issues.
But $(date) does return a string with spaces, at least on every system I’ve ever used. And what’s so bad about the possibility of spaces in filenames? They’re slightly inconvenient in a command line, but I haven’t used a commuter this century that didn’t support spaces in filenames.
Ok, I just reread it. I don’t see what you think I’m missing. You mean an improperly written find command misbehaving? The fact that a different date format could prevent a bug from manifesting doesn’t seem like much of an argument.
Spaces can exist in filenames. The only problem is that they have to be escaped. As the comment that you reread explained, cat hello world.txt would print the files hello and world.txt. If you wanted to print the file “hello world.txt” you’d either need to quote it (cat “hello world.txt”) or escape the space (cat hello world.txt)
Yeah? I once spent an entire week debugging a plaintext database because the software expected the record identifiers to be tokenized a certain way, but the original data source had spaces in those strings.
The software was the ISC DHCP server, the industry standard for decades and only EOL’d a year ago.
Sounds like a weekend that you could have saved if the software was just implemented properly and accepted spaces.
Something being an industry standard does not necessarily mean it’s good. Sometimes it just means it was the cheapest, or sometimes even just because it was used for so long. How long did it take for Torx to somewhat replace philips head screws despite being better in most cases?
I think date strings are made for human and machine readability. Similar to XML or JSON. So, why not improve systems so that we can have more human readable date strings? If you don’t care about human readability and want to make sure there is no confusion with spaces, you can just use epoch timestamps.
I’m not exactly fond of the space either, but man, the T is noisy. They could’ve gone with an underscore or something, so it actually looks like two different sections.
The amount of things allowed by ISO 8601 is even more than what’s allowed by RFC 3339, if you take the time to look at ijmacd.github.io/rfc3339-iso8601/
Thank you very much 🫶. No it’s not annoying at all. I’m very grateful not only for the fact that you read the post but also that you took the time to point out issues.
Interesting, I didn’t know about strong implicit multiplication. So I would have said the result is 9. All along my studies in France, up to my physics courses at University, all my teachers used weak implicit multiplication. Could be it’s the norm in France, or they only use it in math studies at University.
I didn’t know until now that I unconsciously use strong implicit multiplication (meaning that I get the answer “1”). I believe it happens more or less as a consequence of starting inside the parentheses and then working my way out.
It is a funny little bit of notational ambiguity, so it is funny that people get riled up about it.
In a scientific context it’s actually very rare to run into that issue because divisions are mostly written as fractions which will completely mitigate the issue.
The strong implicit multiplication will only cause ambiguity after a division with inline notation. Once you use fractions the ambiguity vanishes.
In practice you also rarely see implicit multiplications between numbers but mostly between variables or variables and their coefficients.
Def not a math major (BS/PharmD), but your explanation was like seeing through a visual illusion for the first time! lol
I was always taught PEMDAS growing up, and that the MD and the AS was read left to right in an equation like above. But stating the division as a fraction completely changes my mind now about how this calculation works. I think what would happen in a calculation I use every day if the former was used.
Example: Cockcroft-Gault Equation (estimation of renal function)
(140-age)(kg) / 72(SCr) vs (140-age) X kg ➗72 X SCr
In the first eq (correct one) an 80yo patient who weighs 65kg and has an SCr ~ 1.5 = 36.11
In the latter it = 81.25 (waaay too high for an 80yo lol)
I think this speaks to why I have a total of 5 years of college and no degree.
Starting at about 7th grade, math class is taught to every single American school child as if they’re going to grow up to become mathematicians. Formal definitions, proofs, long sets of rules for how you manipulate squiggles to become other squiggles that you’re supposed to obey because that’s what the book says.
Early my 7th grade year, my teacher wrote a long string of numbers and operators on the board, something like 6 + 4 - 7 * 8 + 3 / 9. Then told us to work this problem and then say what we came up with. This divided us into two groups: Those who hadn’t learned Order of Operations on our own time who did (six plus four is ten, minus seven is three, times eight is 24, plus three is 27, divided by nine is three) Three, and who were then told we were wrong and stupid, and those who somehow had, who did (seven times eight is 56, three divided by nine is some tiny fraction…) got a very different number, and were told they were right. Terrible method of teaching, because it alienates the students who need to do the learning right off the bat. And this basically set the tone until I dropped out of college for the second time.
Then they tell you the previous person was incompetent or something to try and make it seem like they were a bad employee, not that it’s a bad work environment.
“Oh? And who was in charge of their interview?” because unless they have a large hr department to handle hiring interviews, it was probably the person who hired you.
This is when you take notes in your notebook you should have brought with you.
I’ve noticed interviewers get visibly uncomfortable when I write in my notebook. It’s like they’re either trying to figure out if they just lied about something I will be able to reference later, or they just get that natural “someone is writing about me and I can’t read what it is” feeling, I assume the former.
Simon Pegg wasn’t lying in Hot Fuzz. The notebook is a powerful weapon if used right.
I thought that once too and ignored my gut feeling. It was the most toxic work environment that I've ever experienced, and it essentially killed my software development career. I was eventually laid off and never recovered. I'm now a mail carrier.
I actually work for Canada Post. We've heard rumblings of the pre-sequenced mail coming our way, and some people have lost large chunks of money from it. Contract negotiations are coming up though, so we'll see how things go. Though it is nice having a union that is willing to fight the company for the workers...I've never had that before this job.
Had a similar experience. Toxic company that was awarded a contract hired in a bunch of people, gave us starting dates then a week before we were supposed to start they delayed our start data by 4 months. It only got worse and worse from there. I eventually quit when I was doing 4 other jobs, like with different pay scales and supervisors and everything, by myself. Killed any chances I had with IT since every other company around here doesn’t want to risk yet another burnout from that place. I had the same place interview me twice 6 months apart and both times as soon as they saw that company on my resume they frowned and kind of cut it short.
Actually, I’ve had more than one interviewer comment on it saying it “shows (I’m) prepared” since many people don’t bring anything to write on and sometimes have to ask for a paper.
As for whether that could be a bonus in getting hired? Meh. 110% depends on the field.
If the question is “will asking unnecessary questions and writing down answers help get this job” then I’d ask if the interviewer isn’t prepared for a couple innocuous questions, then it shows a severe lack of preparedness on their part and I’d question whether I want to work for a place where someone gets shook by their underlings daring to question them.
I fully admit I am already biased against nearly any company that I would be interviewing at, so I’m already more willing to get confrontational in interviews if I feel I am not getting the respect I deserve (you know, the basic human decency of treating every random person you meet as an equal until they prove otherwise worthy), and drop them to keep looking than the average person. I’ll eat ramen and peanut butter sandwiches for a few more weeks if I need to. I’ve walked out of interviews before.
I’ve walked out after the opening “greeting”. “alright let’s make this quick, I’ve got a dozen other interviews today” okay well if that’s how you treat someone here for a simple interview I can’t imagine how you treat your employees on a bad day, get fucked. I literally said “excuse me? You don’t talk that way in a professional setting.” and left.
This is absolutely true. My former employer (a big box retail company) reduced my pay while I was on holiday. I had been there for years and accrued a bunch of pay rises - but the company got bought out and the new owners thought they could strip me of these because they felt they were temporary and non-contractual.
I got some legal advice that basically said they can’t do that sort of thing and had a meeting scheduled with HR. I went in with my notepad, I stayed calm - pleasent even - no angry shouting or slamming tables with fists, I just politely asked them questions and wrote down everything they said, then read their answers back to them to confirm thats what they said. I had about 6 questions prepared and by the 4th they were visibly uncomfortable, it was an amazing feeling making them squirm like that. After I got done asking my questions, I dropped the legal advice I had been given on them and it was obvious the answers they gave supported my case very heavily. They panicked and reversed all there decesion plus I got back-pay.
But if the first thing I had done is charge in making accusations and quoting the law I know nothing constructive would have happened.
See the goal is to bury them in their own words.
Edit: predictably the company went bust the next year. So long Office Outlet!
Always get them to bury themselves before dropping your intentions.
My wife is currently dealing with her employer and their complete lack of handicap spots, despite over 200 regular car spaces scattered all around a warehouse lot. She doesn’t quite get how to “play the game” like this but she’s learning.
One party recording state so I’d like her to go in to talk about it while recording, but her anxiety is completely stonewalling her from bringing it up.
Hit record on the phone, slip it in a pocket that has good clearance for the whole conversation, and get them to say the things they’ve said when they think nobody else can hear them.
Apparently the front office woman screamed at her to move her car (she parked there because the offices are isolated from traffic and have access to her work area)and “it’s not our goddamn problem we don’t have handicap spots, it’s yours so deal with it”
I’m about to just skip around waiting for her to do things and file a complaint with the EEOC or at least the ADA government site complaint form. I’m sure that would take months, if not years before anything ever happened, but I can’t hold her hand and be there when she confronts the owners about their 6-8 missing handicap spots.
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