Ah, yes, the age old Unix trope of, "it's not the system, it's the user's fault".
As a Linux user for many years, that doesn't excuse such boneheaded errors. By default no application should clobber existing files, unless asked to. Avoid data loss and all that.
Heck, I remember back when:
tar myfile.txt myarchive.tar
would result in myfile.txt being truncated to 0 bytes (therefore deleting its contents) and a snarky message that myarchive.tar can't be archived because it can't be found.
For those that don't remember how tar works, the arguments are reversed compared to, say, cp.
At least I think they've fixed it, newer tar version says something like "Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive".
The Unix ecosystem, dragged kicking and screaming towards user-friendliness since 1970.
Well, if the user had read the manual before using GCC, it wouldn't have happened.
Regardless, I don't blame them or look down my nose at them. It's bad design. If it's anyone's fault, it's GCC's. But it's certainly not a problem with Unix. This makes it incomparable to the system-level issue of having global filenames like DOS did, apparently.
While Unix was kind of Ok, when coupled with its common userland utilities, the whole often felt like a cactus. Possibly useful, if you don't mind the scars :D
Of course, the man page is a great resource for looking things up, but I can't imagine many people sit down with GCC's man page and actually read it through.
Except that example could also happen on Windows.
> For those that don't remember how tar works, the arguments are reversed compared to, say, cp.
tar cvf/czvf/cjvf archive files (or -cvf/-czvf/-cjvf).
I don't think I've ever seen anyone actually using tar by going:
tar -c files -f archive
Online tutorials seem to also use my form: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/04/unix-tar-command-example...
Either way, bad form, I'm glad they fixed it :)
> Ah, yes, the age old Unix trope of, "it's not the system, it's the user's fault"
Ah, yes, the age-old complaint that a car driver should be able to run a forklift with no practice.
I don't think Unixen should strive for 'user friendliness'. Hacking in "Do you really want to" dialogs would (a) be contrary to all expectations developed over a long time, (b) break a lot of existing software, (b) annoy the bloody hell out of everyone, and (d) not solve anything, because those dialogs don't prevent mistakes.
Not all systems need to converge, and Unix has been a professional toolchain since the beginning. You're expected to know something about it, just like you don't let kids run plasma cutters.
This is a failure to understand GCC's default behavior, not a fundamental flaw with your operating system.
The "core" thing is a little more understandable, but it can all be remedied by choosing reasonable filenames with accurate file extensions. "aux.c" isn't that unreasonable, and if I'm reading it right, he could've called it "aux.foo" and it still would've been broken.