Reading LAST line from text file without iterating through the file?

[Mike Schilling]

I was curious enough to Google "Monty Python" and "fanatical
devotion to the pope". It's from the Spanish Inquisition skit,
and the phrase ("fanatical devotion ....") appears as part of a
list that keeps growing. So I'm guessing the relevance here is
the list that keeps growing. Still a bit of a .... Nope, not
going to give you something you can quote out of context.

No one expects to be quoted out of context!

 

[blmblm]

No one expects to be quoted out of context!

Good one, but in the unlikely event that anyone takes this claim
(about "no one expects") seriously, I have (am?) a counterexample.

I have quite a bit of practice in trying to have a discussion
with someone quotes in the way Ken seems to leaning toward.
It's -- "interesting"?

 

[Paul Cager]

I beg your pardon?

"No True Scotsman" is a logical fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
No_True_Scotsman), where a person dismisses a counter-example to his
assertion by arbitrarily excluding the counter-example. It's a kind of
circular argument, e.g.

A: "Compilers convert a program's source code into instructions that
the hardware can directly execute".
B: "Not all of them. The standard Java compiler produces bytecode
which the hardware cannot directly execute".
A: "Ah well, that's not a proper compiler then. All true compilers
produce machine code".

Often the counter-example is dismissed in a derogatory way so that
person "B" is less likely to want to defend it.

 

[blmblm]

[ snip ]

Even the endless ads for shoes and fancy watches? (My newsserver filters
that crap out, fortunately, but every time I need to dig an older post up
with google, I see the group's thread list clogged full of it.)

Well, the value of archiving that kind of stuff is probably fairly
limited, though I suppose it might be of interest to *someone*
(maybe someone researching something about different methods of
promoting businesses or products?). I suppose I question whether
one can filter out the stuff that almost everyone regards as junk
without catching some good stuff too. As you say, though, some
news servers seem to do a pretty good job. I suppose I'd be in
favor of keeping everything but providing two ways of searching,
one with the "junk" filtered out and one with no filtering. But
I haven't really thought this through.

Is that "interesting" interesting or "old Chinese curse" interesting?

Both.

 

[blmblm]

What? No, we were discussing Leif writing "And Nokia's Ovi Store. And
Sony-Ericsson's eStore. And an almost fanatical devotion to the pope."
and my quoting only "And an almost fanatical devotion to the pope."

Backtracking into previous posts .... My mistake. (What *could*
I have been thinking .... )

 

[Mike Schilling]

Clearly not, or I would surely have recognized it. In actual fact, I
can't recall ever having seen or heard of this so-called "standard way"
before, in decades of both offline and online discourse.

"Fanatical devotion to the pope" does get only 233,000 Google hits.

 

[tm]

The '67 version added lowercase letters! See:

http://www.wps.com/projects/codes/#ASCII-1967

Finally something interesting in this thread. I always
assumed that ASCII had lowercase letters from the
beginning...


Greetings Thomas Mertes

--
Seed7 Homepage: http://seed7.sourceforge.net
Seed7 - The extensible programming language: User defined statements
and operators, abstract data types, templates without special
syntax, OO with interfaces and multiple dispatch, statically typed,
interpreted or compiled, portable, runs under linux/unix/windows.

 

[Mike Schilling]

And the relevance of that is? That phrase has a standard meaning in
addition to the alleged meaning you attribute to it.

"Alleged"? You think the rest of us who knew exactly what it meant invented
the whole thing?

 

[Lew]

"Alleged"? You think the rest of us who knew exactly what it meant invented
the whole thing?

Oh, you want an argument? It's hitting-on-the-head lessons in here!

 

[Mike Schilling]

The alleged "rest of you who knew exactly what it meant", you mean.

Fact is, "known to a small group of people who hang out together
regularly"

Yes, I spend all of my time in Java newsgroups: it's where I learned to
appreciate Monty Python.

 

[Mike Schilling]

How interesting.

The fact remains, I have never seen that phrase used in such a manner
anywhere, ever, until here just the other day.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.

 

[Lew]

"Ken Wesson" wrote ...

How unfortunate. We feel for you.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.

Monty Python is a *far* superior comedy troupe to Monty Java!