[ale] Bash - Advanced Scripting Guide

[Lightner, Jeff]

Like I said it just sounded wrong to me.   As I noted it sounded that
way to me because calling something a subset in conversation (as opposed
to in mathematics) implies to me that it was taken from the main set and
therefore wasn't the original whereas saying something is a superset of
something else implies to me that it is an extension of the original.

 

It's all semantics and my post wasn't meant as an attack.   "Sounds
wrong to me" was an expression of an opinion not an absolute statement
of fact.

 

One of my favorite essays was by George Orwell on the use of language.
What always stood out from that for me was his lamenting of the "not un"
formation in speech.   He noted that saying something is "not un" is the
same as saying it "is" so why not just say that?   He offered a sentence
similar to the following as a way to cure oneself of using it:

"The not unbrown dog chased the not unwhite rabbit through the not
ungreen field."

Personally I disagreed with what he wrote about "not un" as I believe it
is used for emphasizing a positive rather than negating a negative but I
understood his point.   It was not unlike my ramblings about the
difference between subset and superset.  :-)



 

________________________________

From: northrup at gmail.com [mailto:northrup at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Dylan
Northrup
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 1:15 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Cc: Lightner, Jeff
Subject: Re: [ale] Bash - Advanced Scripting Guide

 

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 10:06 AM, Lightner, Jeff <jlightner at water.com>
wrote:

Calling Bourne a "subset" of BASH just sounds wrong to me - it implies
BASH was first.  Since Korn shell was an enhanced shell that built on
Bourne and BASH takes a lot from both I'd say calling BASH a superset of
Bourne/Korn/Posix makes more sense.


If A is a superset of B, then B is a subset of A.  I don't see the
implications you apparently see and have no issue with calling the
feature set of Bourne shell as a subset of the feature set of Bash.  But
that could just be me.

-- 
Dylan Northrup
"Adversity is just change we haven't adapted ourselves to yet."
  - Aimee Mullins
 
Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
 
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