Top all-time · #6153
Brian Reiter
Personal blog · brianreiter.orgprogrammingsystems
Brian Reiter's personal blog at brianreiter.org covers programming and systems. Since 2013, 13 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “PowerShell's Object Pipeline Corrupts Piped Binary Data (2010)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (12) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link these posts as background on the Windows POSIX subsystem and its history, and on PowerShell mangling piped binary data. The comments only link or cite the posts and do not judge the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 12 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Working to make software right.
Most-linked posts?
- /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2015-12-14
- PowerShell's Object Pipeline Corrupts Piped Binary Data (2010)3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2016-11-18
- The Sad History of the Microsoft Posix Subsystem (2010)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-04-24
What Hacker News says?
http://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mic...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Ubuntu on Windows”Submitted The Sad History of the Microsoft Posix Subsystem (2010) as a story · 228 points
HN discussionThis is ancient news re-implemented. Windows NT had a POSIX layer up to about Windows Server 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem http://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mic...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Ubuntu on Windows”Submitted I Modified Vpnc Cisco VPN Client to Use OS X Native User Tunnels as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou confuse the POSIX subsystem with SFU/Interix (originally called "OpenNT", but soon renamed to "Interix". Later bought by Microsoft and rebranded as "Services for UNIX"): > https://www.samba.org/samba/news/articles/low_point/tale_two... > http://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mic...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Microsoft and Canonical partner to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10”Submitted PowerShell's Object Pipeline Corrupts Piped Binary Data (2010) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOr want to pipe data without PowerShell mangling it[0] PowerShell is materially worse than bash for a great many purposes because of this design choice alone. [0] https://brianreiter.org/2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeli...
Comment linking /2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeline-corrupts-piped-binary-data/
on “Shell Style Guide”"SUA is deprecated starting with [Windows 8] and will be completely removed from the next release." http://brianreiter.org/2011/09/15/sua-deprecated-in-windows-...
Comment linking /2011/09/15/sua-deprecated-in-windows-8/
on “Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server will have Git support”That's nice. Can you pipe binary data without powershell corrupting it, or is that now a feature? https://brianreiter.org/2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeli...
Comment linking /2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeline-corrupts-piped-binary-data/
on “Microsoft Replaces Command Prompt with PowerShell in Latest Windows 10 Build”Since PTRACE (which is one easy way to do this) is part of POSIX, does this mean Windows no longer has a POSIX subsystem? Edit: I guess only Server and Enterprise have POSIX: http://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mic...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Avast’s man in the middle”I don't think they imply that windows is Unix (of which is most definitely is not), but rather that one of its original design goals still works. People forget that the original NT was designed to be agnostic to the user-space API. Random link that mentions the OS/2 subsystem. https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mi...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Microsoft leak reveals new Windows 10 Workstation edition for power users”Well, occasionally MS will deprecate an API and remove it from Windows. https://brianreiter.org/2011/09/15/sua-deprecated-in-windows...
Comment linking /2011/09/15/sua-deprecated-in-windows-8/
on “Pico Process Overview – Linux binaries on Windows”check this out: https://brianreiter.org/2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-mi...
Comment linking /2010/08/24/the-sad-history-of-the-microsoft-posix-subsystem/
on “Beyond Bash: Microsoft Refines the Windows Subsystem for Linux”>> Powershell solves these problems by having structured data and types and not just streams of bytes Powershell's structured data can cause issues if you expect it to be similar to Unix-like shells. For example, Powershell mangles piped binary data by default: https://brianreiter.org/2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeli... Correct handling of piped binary data requires additional flags: https://stackoverflow.com/qu…
Comment linking /2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeline-corrupts-piped-binary-data/
on “The shell and its crappy handling of whitespace”PowerShell's pipe silently mangles binary data by default: https://brianreiter.org/2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeli... Newer versions of Powershell have flags that must be explicitly passed to fix this, but it can bite you if you are not aware: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54086430/how-to-pipe-bin...
Comment linking /2010/01/29/powershells-object-pipeline-corrupts-piped-binary-data/
on “Shells Are Two Things”
