NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #30/NN_1992_30.iso/spool/comp/os/msdos/programm/11449

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-16 | 3.4 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Einar Indridason)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.programmer
Subject: Re: Normal MSDOS multitasking!
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Dec 92 15:58:32 GMT
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In <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Duncan Murdoch) writes:

>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Timothy Writer) writes:
>>    cc -E program.c | more
>>
>I don't deny that there are some cases where there's a difference.  But
>how often do you really have problems with complex macros?  If it's as
>often as once a week, I'd suggest that you're doing something wrong.

Ah...
But what if we substitute the string "cc -E program.c | more" with
"general pipeline (as in Unix)"  ?

Wouldn't that make much more sense, if the pipeline wouldn't have to run
the first program to completion, before it starts the second?


>Under DOS, nobody is sharing the CPU with you.  Under DOS, the weird idea
>that you should pass a manual page through a text formatter every time you
>want to look at it never caught on; help systems keep their text in a format
>that's convenient to display.

Under Dos, the idea that a program could have a 'man-page' is (until
recently) allmost unknown.
Besides, help systems store the help files in a variety of ways, often
incompatible.  Some of those help files needs to be formatted in some way,
anyway.

>>zcat huge.tar.Z | tar tvf - | grep 'foo*.c'
>>

>Under DOS, there are lots of programs available to search the text contained
>in archives without uncompressing them, and every archive program that I've
>ever seen will list the filenames without uncompressing the archive.  For
>example, I'd probably run

>  pkunzip -v huge foo*.c

>to do what you did above.  The idea that you have to uncompress
>anything at all just to see the filenames strikes me as a very bad design.

You can get 'zoo' and 'arc' under Unix.  You can also get unzipper for
Unix.

What would you do, if you got a compressed-tar file from a Unix archiver,
that would keep, say, the source code for your favourite editor?  (The
newest version?)
Would you wait until you could get it in .zip form?  (Then that version
might be outdated.)


You mention that 'having to uncompress anything at all just to see the
filenames....' strikes you as a bad design?
Well, it would be still worse under DOgS, where you would have to have the
temp files (if you are extracting with a "pipeline") from a huge.tar.Z
file.
Under Unix, the amount that flows in a pipe is often limited to 5K or 10K
in size.  That means that you can work with a compressed file, if you deal
with it partwise, extracting what you need, and skipping the rest.


I see it as a beauty of the Unix thinking:  You want something that the
standard tools don't provide?  You could pipe some programs together to get
the wanted result.

(this is what I feel.  It is not meant as a flame, rather as an
observation; you are free to have your opinions :-)  (but of
course, mine are correct :-) :-) :)


--
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