I have an experience to share as a new contributor to unix.stackexchange.com where I sensed some slight undercurrents of prejudice. It would be great to receive a response from the moderators mentioned here but any input, technical or otherwise, from others is welcome. I was not able to respond in situ with my thoughts so pardon me for creating a new question.
Observation 1: New contributors cannot comment on their own posts
A few days ago I posted an answer to a Vim question at unix.stackexchange.com and a moderator @muru edited it in kind, but inadvertently introduced errors into the code. It was a by-product of format conversion rather than negligence on his part but I wanted to inform him nonetheless. I did not know how to contact him so I attempted to submit a minor edit to @muru's lowest rated answer to question 278443 and append a memo on the "mangled code". @muru responded in a comment that was both apologetic and helpful. He added "you can always address editors to your post by commenting with @username". This is not true for new contributors. I cannot comment, but only edit, my posts.
Observation 2: A possibly valid edit by a new user is ignored
Incidentally I found a possible error in @muru's answer to question 278443 where he said that the command dd bs=1 count=1000000
"will be horrendously slow". This involved processing only 1 million bytes which would not be slow. A test on my dual-core took 1.8 seconds.
$dd if=/dev/urandom of=~/tmp1 ibs=1 count=1000000
1000000+0 records in
1953+1 records out
1000000 bytes transferred in 1.844224 secs (542233 bytes/sec)
With bs=1
for large amounts such as 1TB then, yes, it would be much slower in comparison to bs=64M
, which is probably what he had in mind. Though I believe my reasoning was sound my edit request was rejected.
Observation 3: Logical reasoning is not required by moderators, only statements
In my first draft of the edit to @muru's answer I realised that I had altered it too much and decided to post my own answer to question 278443. I said "a partial read by dd
with ibs=1
would be unlikely". A moderator @Stephen Kitt commented that "it is impossible". That comment has since been deleted but how is it impossible? For raw data without a multiple of 8 bits i.e. 0< n mod 8 <8 and ibs=1
where the block size is 1 byte or 8 bits how does dd
deal with a read of, say, 3 bits? I do not know, particularly with older media such as tape and older versions of dd
. My knowledge on dd
is limited here. If @Stephen Kitt had the time to explain or point to a relevant post on this topic then the path to education could continue. I have not yet found any further information to support his statement.
Observation 4: Plausible solutions by new users are disparaged
Question 278443 is "What's the POSIX way to read an exact number of bytes from a file?". I then added an option using the read
command, stating that there are limitations after testing a few successful examples. I received a comment recently from @Stephen Kitt saying "POSIX read is very limited, so in the context of this question, your read approach doesn’t work". "Limited" and "doesn't work" are mutually exclusive mathematical probabilities. In the context of the question, read
is a built-in command of POSIX that can be successfully used to read an exact number of bytes as long as certain conditions are met. There are limitations, as stated in my answer, but the OP did not require a failsafe or limitless option. Even so, if @Stephen Kitt can briefly explain these limitations then the wider community would benefit.
Observation 5: Self-deletion of a post by a new user is not possible
Seeing that my answer was likely not beneficial I then attempted to delete it by the obvious method of clicking on the "delete" button at the bottom of the post where it shows in this order: "share", "edit", "delete", "flag". However, I was not able to do so. The result is a client-side redirection to the top of the page.
Observation 6: Prejudice to moderators and long-standing users
I noted that @muru's post on the same question (278443) possessed similar, if not, less merit than my answer, yet received no critique from moderators. His post had a score of "-1" prior to my posted answer and "0" afterwards which indicates to me that it was probably upvoted by @Stephen Kitt.
Discussion
As I have only spent a few days on the unix.stackexchange.com site it is too early to make conclusions. I don't believe the aforementioned moderators are making any begrudging or personal attacks but I am of the impression that there is a hierarchical culture here where new members are scrutinised without restraint and without provision of grounds by long standing members (moderators). I understand that moderators will need to politicise their responses but is this true? Is there a pecking order here or is this community on a level field of information sharing?
Additional comments (05-Nov-2020):
I was unsuccessful in commenting on my answer to question 278443. The resultant URL was What's the POSIX way to read an exact number of bytes from a file? where the query is
noredirect=1#
.Similarly, attempting to delete the same post redirects to What's the POSIX way to read an exact number of bytes from a file? where the query is
noredirect=1#
.Regarding my client-side browser limitations, I don't require a technical investigation by the moderators because my system is 14 years old and the browser is unsupported: Mac OS X 10.6.8, Chrome 49.0.2623.112 (64-bit). Chrome settings: Javascript enabled, Images enabled, Cookies enabled. I can navigate to https://googleapis.github.io/ and http://sstatic.net/ pages. I will try a more up-to-date system.
-n
nor-d
in POSIXread
(because it's "limited"), so "doesn't work" was probably intended to be a polite way to say something about that suggestion.while read line; do echo "$line" | sed ...; done
instead of justsed ...
.cat
ever choked on NUL bytes or inputs not terminated by newlines). I was unaware of all the drama around that Q&A -- I got there by just idly clicking around.read
on my machine. My mistake.read
specification. Now I see where I went wrong. In future I will pay greater heed to my test environment. The phrase "was probably upvoted by Stephen Kitt" was not quite an assumption but a calculated guess. There was only one vote that day and it seemed to coincide with Stephen Kitt's comment. But yes, it should not have been made.read
. Though I cannot see the first-posts nor the late-answers queues because I "need at least 500 reputation", I can see how you found my answer. I did read the question, answers and even the links in the question. I admit that my answer had no added benefit. My purpose for navigating to that question was initially to contact muru by editing his answer. Things became entangled when I created my own answer which was basically a duplicate of the other answers. When I couldn't delete that answer I attempted vainly to improve it.cat
ever choked on NUL bytes or inputs not terminated by newlines", he did say "some older implementations [of text processing tools]" but doesn't explicitly state which.