Xref: utzoo comp.sys.amiga:37915 comp.sys.amiga.tech:6498 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!pawl!shadow From: shadow@pawl.rpi.edu (Deven T. Corzine) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga,comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Relying on ARP (was Re: My AmigaDOS 1.4 wishlist (one among thousands!)) Message-ID: Date: 5 Aug 89 21:45:00 GMT References: <12878@well.UUCP> <26758@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <20904@cup.portal.com> <26872@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <1331@osupyr.mps.ohio-state.edu> <26915@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: usenet@rpi.edu Distribution: na Organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY Lines: 33 In-reply-to: mwm@eris.berkeley.edu's message of 3 Aug 89 11:13:56 GMT On 3 Aug 89 11:13:56 GMT, mwm@eris.berkeley.edu (Mike (I'll think of something yet) Meyer) said: Mike> Note to AmigaDOS bashers: "*" is another one of the things that Mike> AmigaDOS does right that Unix does wrong. With this, you don't Mike> have to hack every program to understand some magic token to Mike> mean "read from standard input instead of opening the file." Mike> Good Unix systems (like the 4BSD ones I run :-) have something Mike> similar but more powerful in /dev/fd. AmigaDOS's "*" is _exactly_ analogous to Unix's "/dev/tty". "*" is NOT synonymous with stdin. You can do "cp /dev/tty file" under Unix and get exactly the same effect as "copy * file" under AmigaDOS. /dev/fd is something completely different which AmigaDOS has no equivalent to. Also, most Unix programs were not "hacked to understand some magic token" -- the traditional approach is to accept a file argument, or a number of them, or to use stdin if no files are specified. True, often "-" is interpreted as "use stdin", but you CAN'T do the same thing with AmigaDOS. For example, "ls -l | cat file1 - file2 > file3" will not work under AmigaDOS. Apart from not having pipes available, "list | join file1 * file2 >file3" would not take stdin for the second file. Deven -- Deven T. Corzine Internet: deven@rpi.edu, shadow@pawl.rpi.edu Snail: 2214 12th Street, Troy, NY 12180 Phone: (518) 271-0750 Bitnet: deven@rpitsmts, userfxb6@rpitsmts UUCP: uunet!rpi!deven Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.