Displaying Unix file information in DIRED

[Reti@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Kalman Reti)]

    Date: Sun, 22 Jul 90 00:26:40 EDT
    From: barmar@Think.COM

       Date: Sat, 21 Jul 90 21:14 PDT
       From: Kalman Reti <Reti@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

       The existence of a UX400S isn't germaine; its the existence of a Unix host
       running NFS on which I have an account (or know the password) which is lacking.

    Sorry, I was assuming that most Symbolics people would have access to
    Symbolics's Unix systems.
I have access to one which doesn't run NFS.

       Again, in this case, only by copying the entire body of code you are 'advising'.
       That seems philosophically more like a replacement than advice to me.  If there
       were an "advise at this PC" mechanism, then I'd agree with you.

    I wish there were such a thing as well; often I can get pretty close with
    advise-within.  If not, and the change needs to be made in the middle of
    the function, I'll do a real patch rather than write :around advice that
    never uses :do-it.
One approach which is technically possible but (as far as I know unimplemented) is
to set a breakpoint in the function and the have a global condition handler for the
breakpoint condition do the "inside advice" and return.

       Oops, technically, I probably didn't have the right to do it either (since
       I just now noticed that one of the functions is in the optional sources).
       I could have sworn that the one file listing function was in basic source
       some time back, since I modified it at a customer site without optional
       sources.  Maybe my memory is going as I get older.

    I don't think it matters which source category something is in.  There's no
    guarantee that everyone on the slug mailing list has signed a Symbolics
    license (do delivery machines, such as 3610AE and Delivery MacIvory
    systems, come with source code?).
You're completely right (as several people inside the company were quick to point out).
My mindset was that I was providing "an example of how easy it was" instead of
providing "free licensed code", but I've been politically reeducated. ;->

(Apropos of absolutely nothing: I've been using that same smiling face Icon as my FEP prompt
and it just occurred to me that would be a neat hack to automagically change it to ";-<" 
if the machine crashed into the FEP.)