Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!att!mcdchg!ddsw1!corpane!sparks
From: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Making Format a little nicer
Message-ID: <869@corpane.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jun 89 18:01:27 GMT
References: <7141@cbmvax.UUCP> <7144@cbmvax.UUCP>
Reply-To: sparks@corpane.UUCP (John Sparks)
Organization: Corpane Industries, Inc.
Lines: 37

In article <7144@cbmvax.UUCP> andy@cbmvax.UUCP (Andy Finkel) writes:
>In article <7141@cbmvax.UUCP> higgin@cbmvax.UUCP (Paul Higginbottom) writes:
>>I became so irate the other day with the Format program's
>>requirement that I type in stupid words like NAME and DRIVE
>>that I wrote this little script and added the following aliases.
>
>Obviously, Format's slightly hard to use for a reason...so you have to
>think about what you're typing, and so are less likely to zap an important
>disk.  However, since we're all power users here, we can override it,
>as you've shown.  
>

Y'know... If someone is ditzy enough to type "FORMAT DF1:" by mistake then they
are ditzy enough to type "FORMAT DRIVE DF1: NAME "Bujim" " by mistake. If the 
word FORMAT doesn't give it away, the words DRIVE and NAME sure won't.


Making someone type a few more words isn't going to stop stupidity. I think
format would be much better without the word DRIVE and NAME. The program should
be able to scan the command line for a device name ending with ':' and look for
and optional volume name in quotes for the name.

1> Format df0: "Bujim"

If you want to be safe, Format could print a message:

[beep]..This will erase all data on the disk in DF0: (or whatever device), Are
you sure you want to do this?


Just an opinion. Actually format is not used that often compared to other
commands so it's probably not too important to worry about.

-- 
John Sparks   |  {rutgers|uunet}!ukma!corpane!sparks | D.I.S.K. 24hrs 1200bps
|||||||||||||||          sparks@corpane.UUCP         | 502/968-5401 thru -5406  
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive.