Plurrrr

Mon 06 Sep 2021

Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls(1)

The ls(1) command is pretty good at showing you the attributes of a single file (at least in some cases), but when you ask it for a list of files, there's a huge problem: Unix allows almost any character in a filename, including whitespace, newlines, commas, pipe symbols, and pretty much anything else you'd ever try to use as a delimiter except NUL. There are proposals to try and "fix" this within POSIX, but they won't help in dealing with the current situation (see also how to deal with filenames correctly). In its default mode, if standard output isn't a terminal, ls separates filenames with newlines. This is fine until you have a file with a newline in its name. And since I don't know of any implementation of ls that allows you to terminate filenames with NUL characters instead of newlines, this leaves us unable to get a list of filenames safely with ls.

Source: Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls(1).

The Broken Eye

As the old gods awaken and satrapies splinter, the Chromeria races to find the only man who can still end a civil war before it engulfs the known world. But Gavin Guile has been captured by an old enemy and enslaved on a pirate galley. Worse still, Gavin has lost more than his powers as Prism -- he can't use magic at all.

Without the protection of his father, Kip Guile will face a master of shadows as his grandfather moves to choose a new Prism and put himself in power. With Teia and Karris, Kip will have to use all his wits to survive a secret war between noble houses, religious factions, rebels, and an ascendant order of hidden assassins called The Broken Eye.

In the evening I started in The Broken Eye, Lightbringer Book 3 by Brent Weeks. I enjoyed the previous books a lot, especially the second one.