Tom Keays writes: | on 7/7/03 2:03 PM, John Chambers wrote: | > This is one of the reasons that I turned jcabc2ps into a normal unix | > "filter" that reads stdin if there are no input files. That way I can | > stick any sort of preprocessor on the beginning, and not worry about | > cleaning up intermediate files. | | Does abcm2ps work this way too? With the discussion on the list to merge | the two efforts, this seems like a good first step.
Yeah, that was my first suggestion, a couple of days ago. I haven't heard back, but jef may be busy. (I know I am. ;-) This was one of the real disappointments that I had with abc2ps. With something like my tune finder, which uses it as the main tool for converting tunes to a list of formats, there is a real problem with managing all the intermediate files. It's very easy to end up with zillions of relic files on the disk. Unix's pipelines can be a real help in getting such messes under control. Actually, one of the things that some users of the tune finder's conversions have noticed and asked about: Sometimes when the job is done, there is a significant pause before the connection is broken and your browser says it's done. What's happening is the cleanup phase of the conversion script. It's searching the tmp directory for files more than an hour old, and deleting them. It's necessary to leave files around for a while, because browsers can sometimes take a while (i.e., more than a second) to get back and fetch things like images. The strategy is to not delete any file that may possibly be of some use in the near future, to give the client browser time to get everything. An hour later, someone else's request handles the job of purging the old files. Yes, it's a pain in the ass. ;-) And it's mostly because of all the programs that insist on using files rather than pipes. To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
