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Programming Blog Archive - Nov 2016

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11/26/2016 - The renovated Puppy Linux Setup Kit will probably require PHP and PHP-GTK

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The renovated Puppy Linux Setup Kit will probably require PHP and PHP-GTK
Saturday, November 26th, 2016
05:59:24 GMT


While trying to figure out the best way to do some new things with my Puppy Linux Setup Kit, I finally found out that various Unix-related systems (including GNU/Linux) are excessively flexible about what characters are allowed in file names.

Here's a detailed essay I found on that topic, from dwheeler.com:

Fixing Unix/Linux/POSIX Filenames:
Control Characters (such as Newline), Leading Dashes, and Other Problems


So, that means using shell commands like "find", "xargs", etc. is much trickier and more inconvenient than I thought.

Quite annoyingly, newline characters can be in file names. So, there's no guarantee that each line of output from "find" will contain a complete file path. I also had trouble with trying to make "xargs" deal with paths containing single quotes. And the above essay describes numerous even worse problems.

These problems make me less reluctant to make the Puppy Linux Setup Kit require PHP and PHP-GTK, partly just so I can hopefully avoid a lot of the quirks of Bash programming.


I still like Bash programming much more than I used to, and I like being able to make some simple GUIs (graphical user interfaces) using only stuff that's already included by default with Puppy Linux, such as GtkDialog, which can be used to make a nice variety of GUI elements.

And I still think it was worthwhile to spend a few months struggling with Bash programming, since I learned a lot from that.

But I still have such a tremendously easier time with PHP than Bash scripts that I doubt I'll ever be fully comfortable with the latter, at this rate.

I'll probably still use Bash for simple things, but will probably use PHP for more complicated things.

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Note by Apollia on Nov. 8, 2023: Please join my Patreon if you'd like to support me and my work!

My main personal website is now Apollia.org. I'm still not sure what to do with Astroblahhh.Com, so it's mostly staying as-is for now.