Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvca!charles
From: charles@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM (Charles Brown)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Dealing with multiple scripting languages (was: Elinating the 'rx' from AREXX)
Message-ID: <1410029@hpcvca.CV.HP.COM>
Date: 1 Sep 89 01:07:54 GMT
References: <1989Aug14.015608.21854@agate.berkeley.edu>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, Oregon
Lines: 58

> Like most simple solutions to complex problems, this one doesn't work.

This looks like a case of saying the glass is half empty rather than
half full.

> First problem: Line? What's a line in a binary file? I really don't
> want the system looking through 300K or so of a databse for a newline
> character that isn't in it. This actually has an easy solution:
> instead of limiting it to the first couple of lines, limit it to the
> first N bytes, for reasonable N - the first block sounds good.

I noticed this after my last posting.  I think it would be best to
limit it to 2 lines or 200 bytes/characters, whichever comes first.

> Second problem: The string needs to be something that isn't likely to
> appear in a binary file - or an arbitrary text file - by chance. Once
> again, the solution is simple.

The proposed string is already not likely to appear in a binary file
by chance.  What were you thinking?

> Third problem: This is ugly. The real BSD solution is clean, simple,
> and fit well with the existing system on Unix. This doesn't fit well
> with what's already on the Amiga (though the Unix solution would).

I disagree.  But then esthetics is always a matter of opinion.  The
Unix solution is inflexible.  It requires the first character in the
file to be a "#".  That breaks script languages which do not have "#"
as a comment character.  This is a problem under Unix today.
If Peter's proposal had instead been used under Unix, those script
languages would work gracefully with #!program.  The Amiga has the
same situation.  Script languages would be broken by the use of
#!program.  They would not be broken by Peter's proposal.  So you have
it exactly backward.

> Fourth problem: Having Execute feed an ARexx script to ARexx cuts off
> the major part of ARexx's usefullness as a scripting language.

I don't understand.  If I give an ARexx script name as the command to
Execute and it automagically hands it to ARexx rather than trying to
do something else, what is wrong?  That is just what I want it to do.

> One more time: Unix doesn't have a mechanism similar to ARexx.
> Adopting the BSD solution to the problem of multiple scripting
> languages doesn't solve any existing problems - you still have to have
> two seperate mechanisms, one for ARexx and one for everything else. In
> this case, "everything else" is only one thing. So why bother?
> Especially when ARexx _already has_ a mechanism allowing for multiple
> scripting languages.
> --
> Take a magic carpet to the olden days			Mike Meyer

Everything else?  Which "one thing" did you have in mind?  Basic?  sh?
csh?  awk?  dpslide? ...
--
	Charles Brown	charles@cv.hp.com or charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com
			or hplabs!hpcvca!charles or "Hey you!"
	Not representing my employer.