
Using the Plan9 Plumber Utility (2013) - pmoriarty
http://www.mostlymaths.net/2013/04/just-as-mario-using-plan9-plumber.html
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SixSigma
I use plan9 regularly since 2000

In one Acme window I'll be running

    
    
        tail -f /n/kremvax/var/log/error-log-of-some-daemon
    

And then I can plumb the error messages

    
    
        runtime error : Var is null at line 45 in /srv/www/cgi/script
    

I can plumb the error message and Acme will open
/n/kremvax/srv/www/cgi/script:45

but for extra fun I could grep script for includes and open them too.

Bear in mind that kremvax is a remote machine.

You can build quite sophisticated rules that fit your workflow. e.g. some URLs
open to edit, some to view.

It can even know the difference between which application you are plumbing
from.

~~~
arthurk
I'm curious, what do you use plan9 for?

~~~
SixSigma
It is an OS designed by the best minds that built Unix such as Rob Pike, Doug
McIlroy, Denis Ritchie, Bruce Ellis, Dave Presotto, Tom Duff, Ken Thompson,
Russ Cox ... the list of luminaries goes on and on. They built the tools for
themselves to use day in day out with no backwards compatibility constraints
and no marketing consideration. Its lack of popularity is not because of
technical merit.

If you thought Unix was good, the question should be "why don't you use
plan9?"

As for me, I'm a humble coder, so I use the tools I find best for that job.

~~~
Avshalom
>If you thought Unix was good, the question should be "why don't you use
plan9?"

Because I don't control the technical infrastructure of my employer or my
employers customers and plan9 is not trivially compatible with that
infrastructure.

... Which is why people are interested in what other people are doing with it.

~~~
SixSigma
Fair comment. But I learned it in my own time on my own computers.

Anyway, one thing I can add is that it is my screenshot on the Acme wikipedia
page

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_(text_editor)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_\(text_editor\))

It has my plumbing rules for editing my php website

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RBerenguel
Surprised this got posted, as it is pretty old :D I guess there is a minor
Plan9/Acme/Sam renaissance going on these days (many posts related to them.)
If you have any questions about Acme, plumber usage or the details in the post
please ask here (or drop me an email.)

~~~
SixSigma
I've been using plan9 for 15 years, there is a constant renaissance. The Plan9
papers and community Web pages are reposted on a HN regularly if not
frequently as each new crop of programmers "discovers" the richness.

~~~
RBerenguel
Yup, I fell into it during one of its renaissances.

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jamesaguilar
This would be neat for linking to source locations in the terminal and in the
console output of an IDE.

~~~
SixSigma
That is one of the defaults that ships with plan9. Any text of the form

    
    
        [A-z0-9/_.,-]+:[0-9]+ 
    

I..e a path with a line number - e.g. /sys/src/lib9/9.h:5

Will open that file in your editor at that line.

The plan9 utiiities, such as grep -n, will present filenames with line numbers
in that form.

It is trivial to add your own such that

    
    
        Error X in file /path/to/file on line 5
    

Will do the same.

Before plan9 had a usable html4 renderer I would send URLs to a listener on a
Unix machine with firefox to open them there inside my VNC session.

