From: Robert Dober <robert.dober@...>
Date: 2007-03-17T08:17:20+09:00
Subject: Re: The philosophy of failed pings

On 3/16/07, Daniel Berger <djberg96@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I need some advice. I recently received a bug report for
> Net::Ping::External class (part of
> the net-ping package) where the user was getting false positives.
>
> In his case he was pinging some bogus loopback address. The ping
> command did not raise any error or warning, but it did have 100%
> packet failure.
>
> So, my question is, should I look for "100% packet loss" in the output
> and, if found, consider that a failed ping no matter what? I know I
> could make it configurable, but even if I go that route, I'd like to
> know what the default behavior should be.
>
> It wouldn't be hard to implement, but I thought I would ask since I
> think this package is fairly popular now I think and I want to get
> feedback before I start breaking things.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
>
Normally I try to look it up myself, but right now I am a little bit
tired, sorry and man ping does not show the return values on my
Zenwalk :(

I feel that you should go for maximum compatibility with the ping
system command.
So whenever ping leaves $? to 0 return true, else false.

The question remains: Which system? well I would opt for Linux b/c it
is probably the same as *BSD. But it is your project :)
>

Just my 0.02...

Robert
-- 
You see things; and you say Why?
But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?
-- George Bernard Shaw