http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/opinion/14rich.html?ref=opinion

The New York Times

September 14, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Palin-Whatshisname Ticket
By FRANK RICH

WITH all due deference to lipstick, let’s advance the story. A week
ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away
from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would
Sarah Palin be?

It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the
G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of
John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This
unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the
room of this election.

No longer able to remember his principles any better than he can
distinguish between Sunnis and Shia, McCain stands revealed as a guy
who can be easily rolled by anyone who sells him a plan for “victory,”
whether in Iraq or in Michigan. A McCain victory on Election Day will
usher in a Palin presidency, with McCain serving as a transitional
front man, an even weaker Bush to her Cheney.

The ambitious Palin and the ruthless forces she represents know it,
too. You can almost see them smacking their lips in anticipation,
whether they’re wearing lipstick or not.

This was made clear in the most chilling passage of Palin’s didn't under bash.
> 
> My original code looked something like:
> 
>     ls -lR /media/cdrom > $TMP1
>     while [ -s $TMP1 ] ; do
>        LINE=`head -1 $TMP1`
>        [process LINE, result in OUTLN]
>        echo $OUTLN >> $TMP3
>        tail +2 $TMP1 > $TMP2
>        mv -f $TMP2 $TMP1
>     done
>     cat $TMP3 >> $OUTPUTFILE
> 
> which worked, but slowly.
> 
>     CONTENTS=`ls -lR /media/cdrom`
>     echo $CONTENTS | while read LINE ; do
>        [process LINE, results in OUTLN]
>        RESULTS="$RESULTS
>           $OUTLN"
>     done
> 
> barfed when CONTENTS was too long.  In my test case, it was over a 
> megabyte.  And trying to append the results to a variable didn't work 
> either.  And, as already discussed, the values of the variables 
> disappeared once the loop was done.

Yeah, you want to avoid the big shell variables :-).  Writing to a temporary
file will certainly work, be aware that there can be security implications to
temporary files (see
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/TemporaryFileSecurity.aspx and
other locations)

Also, instead of writing to a temporary file and then copying to an output
file, have you considered something like this?

   ls -lR /media/cdrom | while read LINE; do
     [process LINE, results in OUTLN]
     echo $OUTLN >>$OUTPUTFILE
   done

> 
> Next I tried:
> 
>     ls -lR /media/cdrom > $TMP1
>     while read LINE < $TMP1 ; do
>        [process LINE, results in OUTLN]
>        echo $OUTLN >> $TMP2
>     done
>     cat $TMP2 >> $OUTPUTFILE
> 
> and 'while' kept rereading the first line of TMP1.  The latest revision, 
> which I don't think deserves a UUOC award, is:
> 
>     ls -lR /media/cdrom > $TMP1
>     cat $TMP1 | while read LINE ; do
>        [process LINE, results in OUTLN]
>        echo $OUTLN >> $TMP2
>     done
>     cat $TMP2 >> $OUTPUTFILE
> 
> which works, and is a lot faster than the first version.
> 
> This loop intentionally gets and processes one line at a time.  Actually 
> I used "while read F1 F2 F3 F4 F5" which also separated the line into 
> fields by whitespace, thus accomplishing two things with one command.
> 
> Anyway that's where things stand.  I hope this is helpful to somebody at 
> some point.
> 
> Adam
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group                  http://mhvlug.org        
>      
> http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug                           
> Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm)                         MHVLS Auditorium        
>           
>   Sep 3 - Porkchop - The Areas of My Expertise
>   Oct 1 - Ubikeys
>   Oct 4 - Linux Fest
>   Nov 5 - Releasing Open Source Software
>   Dec 3 - TBD
>   
> 


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michaelMuller = [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.mindhog.net/~mmuller
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Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu - May all beings everywhere be happy and free.
And may my own thoughts and actions contribute to that happiness and freedom.
=============================================================================
_______________________________________________
Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group                  http://mhvlug.org          
   
http://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug                           
Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm)                         MHVLS Auditorium          
        
  Sep 3 - Porkchop - The Areas of My Expertise
  Oct 1 - Ubikeys
  Oct 4 - Linux Fest
  Nov 5 - Releasing Open Source Software
  Dec 3 - TBD
  

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