Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!dino!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!iuvax!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!ain
From: ain@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Pat-bob White)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Links
Keywords: Link are bad
Message-ID: <4174@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 22 Sep 89 18:00:11 GMT
References: <8909180737.AA29741@postgres.Berkeley.EDU> <1989Sep18.210925.5543@NCoast.ORG>
Reply-To: ain@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Pat-bob White)
Organization: PUCC Land, USA
Lines: 23

In article <1989Sep18.210925.5543@NCoast.ORG> davewt@ncoast.ORG (David Wright) writes:
>And for a fairly unimportant feature at that...

	Actually, the feature *can* save you lots of disk space.  eg: compress.
Compress, uncompress, and zcat all use enough of the same code that
they are designed to look at argv[0] and decide how to act.  The additional
code to do the check and make the change in operation was far less than two
more copies of the program would be.  (BTW, even the Amiga version of compress
that was ported from unix still does this.)

	So, soft links (or a shell that does "aliases" a certain way), would
suffice for getting three separate prorgams from one.  (a shell would have to
pass the aliased name as argv[0] to the program.. not difficult)

	I know one could just add options to the program to control its
functioning, but sometimes it is nice to just be able to type "zcat foo.Z"
rather than "compress -dc foo.Z".


Pat White
ARPA/UUCP: j.cc.purdue.edu!ain  BITNET: PATWHITE@PURCCVM  PHONE: (317) 743-8421
U.S.  Mail:  320 Brown St. apt. 406,    West Lafayette, IN 47906
	Did you ever feel like you were living in a hierarchy?