Re: HOWTO update

On Thu, 29 May 2003, Steven Kurylo wrote:

> First I'd like to say this is great work so far, but I do have a
> question.  On the  top of 15 you say, in reference to $$, "This doesn't
> strictly gaurantee [sic] that the filename will always be unique..."  So
> how does using the command " scs2pdf > /tmp/output$$.pdf" make it unique
> then, as the next line states?  Perhaps if the line "So to make unique
> filesnames use ..." to  "So to make unguaranteed unique filesnames ..."
>  Thats still awkard, but it feels like the sentence you currently have
> is offering to fix to the uniqueness problem with $$.  The main reason I
> bring this up is in regular use our office will easier have a collision
> using $$.

Thanks for pointing this out, it is confusing.  The reason $$ won't always
be unique is that the process id can wrap.  So if you print a lot, have a
lot of processes, or don't move or rename them, they will get overwritten.
Perhaps I should mention that in the HOWTO.  Thank you for catching that.

> What I've been doing on my system is the command "scs2pdf >
> /tmp/output-` date +%m-%d-%H-%M-%S`"  The date command in backticks will
> add the current date/time into the file name.  Unless you can print more
> than one file a second, you can never have a collision until the year wraps.

I didn't even think of that solution.  That's a great idea.  I'll add this
in.  Thank you.

James Rich