DOS batch files ... heh .... Want to know how crazy I am? When I got my first real programming job, on a PDP-11/34 running RSX-11M, we were at least one major OS release behind the times. Well, okay, the whole bloody machine was behind the times -- full disclosure: this was in 1981, I believe. I'd previously used a VAX 11/780 at a college computer lab, and I missed DCL. The MCR stock CLI sucked. So, out of sheer insanity, I wrote a DCL work-alike ... as a batch file. I even included command aliasing (although I couldn't figure out how to make that persistent, unfortunately). You're
really making me feel old.
Also making me realize how much I've let my skills slip.
As far as our responses to the troll:
I assume I'm the one you're referring to in "no better than the troll". I make no apologies. I do not like people waltzing into a friendly, peaceful forum and trying to stir up @#$%. I do not like people who insult my friends and especially insult people like Kovid, whom I admire greatly. And yes, we've had several trolls here recently (along with a possible/probable astroturfing incident), and I would not be surprised to find that this was just a recurrence of another who was banned. We don't get nearly as many of them as some forums, of course, but no forum is immune.
I respond to people in accordance with their own attitudes. If someone asks for help, I'll help them to the best of my ability or direct them to someone who can. If someone is bumbling around looking confused, I'll get them sorted out. But if someone comes in here in attack mode, I will damn well defend this forum and its members, and I will make it clear that the intruder's actions and attitude are not acceptable, and their accusations and insinuations are wrong. Most people here are very nice, polite, trusting, and kind; they see deliberate trolling as honest misunderstanding, because that's why
they would make a post like that, and get drawn into the troll's trap. I am none of those things, which makes it easier to spot trolls for what they are. There is absolutely no question in my mind that individual was a troll. His first post could be summarized as "That software you all like so much is trash, and I know you're not going to agree with me because you're all really stupid." You may have missed most of his second post, which Kovid heavily edited before locking the thread, but it was nasty.
Should a friendly, welcoming community extend that friendship and welcome to a person who is actively working to disrupt or destroy that community?
I say no.
Defending oneself, one's family, one's home, or one's community does not put one on an equivalent moral level with whoever is attacking them. And we are a community of adults here, not a group of children who need to wait for a teacher to come settle their schoolyard disputes. We have not only the ability but IMO the obligation to speak out in defense of the standards of our community (something which, sadly, many offline communities have abandoned in favor of the "children in a schoolyard" model, where any action not illegal is also unreproachable).
Was I going to convince the troll of anything? Of course not. He was just a ROM-head; you pretty much have to be, to be a troll. I wasn't really writing for him. I was writing for the lurkers, and especially for the people he was attacking. I'm sure Kovid knows we've all got his back, but sometimes a public demonstration is beneficial. And I was writing to define what was out of bounds by our community standards, defining it in the way that it
should be done: from within the community, by community members saying "what you just did is wrong", not by some drafting committee of some study board writing up a mealy-mouthed policy statement full of neither sound nor fury, but still signifying nothing.
Anyway, he seems to be gone, and we can return to talking about more important things, like regexes.
P.S. Don't apologize for long posts. There is one thing that everyone in this forum shares: we're all readers.