NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #19/NN_1992_19.iso/spool/comp/sys/acorn/8465

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-02 | 2.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!stl!ajdh
From: [e-mail] (Andrew J D Hurley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.acorn
Subject: Re: OS differences and improvements (Was Re: new PC's, what's happening acorn?)
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 2 Sep 92 10:47:59 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Sender: [e-mail]
Organization: BNR Europe Limited, Harlow, GB
Lines: 45

This is probably old hat now, but here's my 2p worth:

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Pete Goodwin) writes:
>I'm sorry but DIR suggests DIRECTORY, TYPE suggests TYPE a file, PRINT suggests
>PRINT a file, SEARCH suggests search.

To me, DIR suggests MS-DOS, TYPE suggests RiscOS or BBC MOS, PRINT suggests
BASIC - I don't like overloaded names on different systems unless they
do the same thing, besides, why are they upper case?

>Now does ls suggest directory, or cat sugggest type or lpr suggest print or
>grep suggest search??? The one command I took from UNIX was cd, which I equate
>to SET DEF in VMS.

ls suggests LiSt which is what it does, cat suggests CATalogue - a little
obscure, lpr suggests Line PRint (or Laser PRint) which is what it does, grep
is Get Regular ExPression and so on. Ok, some are a little obscure but they
are just as workable as any other names - in order to use any OS you have to
know what commands do as well as what they are called. Whilst learning
what they do it is trivial to simultaneously learn what they are called.
I use several OSs regularly and find it a nuisance when two use the same
name to do something slightly different, ie different parameters or
different output format. I rarely have this problem with Unix as the
names are mostly unique.

>Whenever I read UNIX shell scripts they read like gibberish. Full of strange
>characters like ~ ` ' # or $. You need to be a real expert to see what's going
>on.

True, but then you need to be an expert to follow any programming language,
if all a script does is execute commands in sequence (a la RiscOS or DOS
script) then it's easy to follow.

>Only if you've been tainted by MSDOS (using you're description 8) I've never
>used backspace as delete, I've always used DELETE.

Ditto, I hadn't noticed there was a problem and I've been using RiscOS for
over two years now. What does annoy me is when I have to use a DrOS box.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew J D Hurley ,   ><>         |  Email:   [e-mail]
                                  |   or      [e-mail]
BNR Europe Ltd., London Road,     |  route:   uunet!ukc!bnr!ajdh
Harlow, Essex CM17 9NA, UK.       |  Phone:   [phone]