[clug] Cut a file in place.

[Paul Wayper]

On 18/9/19 8:23 am, Robert Edwards via linux wrote:
> <rant>
> I must say that I find these "XY Problem" shaming characterisations
> somewhat disquieting.
[...]
> In the case of the second example at https://mywiki.wooledge.org/XyProblem,
> just saying "rsync", "next" is highly rude. Why not give a complete
> rsync command line etc. This just stinks of arrogance. Will rsync
> even cope with a corrupted file?
> </rant>

All agreed.  I did come across as a bit rude too so I apologise for that.  I
think greycat can apologise for himself :-)

Personally I think it's worth pointing to the XY problem - and I'll probably
use another explanatory page in future - because I think a lot of us are used
to thinking that we *do* are actually solving the problem we have in the
'right' way.  When we just ask for a specific bit of knowledge, we don't give
ourselves the opportunity to see outside our narrow focus and find out an
overall solution that is better.

Hence I encourage people to tell us the whole problem - including things
they've already tried - when they're asking for a solution.  The rsync case is
a perfect example of a problem with a well known, robust solution that, if we
didn't have it, would involve a lot of complications and hard work.

Anyway, I think it's also proven that we can come up with lots of possible
solutions when given an interesting problem :-)

Hope this helps,

Paul