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- Path: keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca!not-for-mail
- From: c2a192@ugrad.cs.ubc.ca (Kazimir Kylheku)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.object,comp.software-eng
- Subject: Re: Portability of code & skills (Beware of "C" Hackers etc)
- Followup-To: comp.unix.advocacy
- Date: 25 Mar 1996 08:44:32 -0800
- Organization: Computer Science, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C., Canada
- Message-ID: <4j6ihgINNec3@keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca>
- References: <4ikb6kINN1is@mayne.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca> <4ip5om$s9@bughouse.imonics.com> <4isfcu$p09@news1.mnsinc.com> <4j6c48$4mr@bughouse.imonics.com>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: keats.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca
-
- In article <4j6c48$4mr@bughouse.imonics.com>,
- Imonics Corporation <rcook@imonics.com> wrote:
- >Well, you got the "mean" part right. As for not being for non-experts,
- >there sure are a lot of people touting Unix as the only good
- >operating system for any purpose. Sheesh.
- >
- >As for "necessity": it is not necessary to name the list files command "ls",
- >the help function "man", the print function "lp", and the editor "vi".
- >It is not and was never necessary to limit options to single case-
- >sensitive letters so that you have to remember all the magic mumbles
- >to do your work. It is not necessary to give "cute" names to things
- >(say, "set noclobber"). These things don't save enough space to be
- >worth mentioning, even on the old 8-bit machines. I don't believe
- >that's why it was done; do you have any evidence? Would it have
- >taxed those early systems if the "ls" command had been named, say,
- >"list"? Or "dir"?
- >
- >I think part of it is blindness -- I think those people honestly think
- >that, if an abbreviation is good enough for them, it is good enough for
- >everyone. That's why the namespace for Unix commands is such a bloody
- >mess. They couldn't even keep consistent within their own commands;
- >"cd" for "change directory", but "pwd" for "print working directory".
- >Well, is it a "directory" or a "working directory"? Come to think of
- >it, when else is it ever called a working directory?
-
- Who gives a damn? These UNIX commands and their options are _standardized_ by
- ANSI/POSIX.
-
- Take this crap to *.advocacy
-
- >But I really do think that most of it is fascination with the ultimate
- >video game. Look at this neat thing I can do, all I have to enter
- >is "awk -syLgX -poop -l cfgfile".
-
- My facination is that you can do a million things with UNIX, from running an
- efficient internet provider, to controlling a complex telecommunication network
- of, to playing games, rendering graphics, writing papers and correspondence...
- all of which works smoothly, efficiently and reliably. I have not seen one
- system that could offer so much versatility. Because it is so standardized, I
- can obtain quality freeware implementations of it, and write software that
- works on these as well as the commercial counterparts.
-
- >And, yeah, I can define aliases for commands as I want. But it should
- >not be the purpose of aliases to bring order to the chaos. And all the
- >documentation, such as it is, uses the obscure names for everything.
-
- These obscure names are part of an international standard called POSIX.2.
- Commands on other systems are not thus standardized. Hard to learn doesn't
- imply hard to use. There are all kinds of graphical shells and GUI programs for
- UNIX nowadays, so that most casual users can get by without learning the Bourne
- shell.
-
- I apply UNIX systems to solve problems that transcend petty squabbles like
- "dir" versus "ls".
- --
-
-