Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!amdahl!kim From: kim@uts.amdahl.com (Kim DeVaughn) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: What should be in future SKsh versions? Message-ID: Date: 9 Dec 89 21:54:59 GMT References: <13920018@hpfelg.HP.COM>, Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 Lines: 32 In article , bader+@andrew.cmu.edu (Miles Bader) writes: > > Why exactly do you need builtins at all, even on a floppy disk, given the > existance of REZ? [Which has the large advantage of letting the USER decide > which commands take up memory space...] I am all for leaving it up to the user to decide which commands, or specific implementations thereof, to use. Absolutely. However, there is a fundemental problem that exists that builtin's allow you to get around. That is the braindamaged limitation on the length of the command line that AmigaDOS can handle. Something like 256 bytes. Ridiculous! Sure, that is long enough for most things, but it is a real pain to try and deal with directories that may have, oh, say 1200 files in them (such as root0:spool/news/comp/sys/amiga frequently has on my machine). Is it possible this limitation will be removed under 1.4? How about 1.5? 1.6? How about going so far as to make it *dynamic* ... or allowing the *user* to decide how much buffer area to burn? Arbitrary, hard-coded limits like this really turn me off (and yes, I know there are a bunch of them in UN*X, too)! Grrrrrrr .... /kim -- UUCP: kim@amdahl.amdahl.com or: {sun,decwrl,hplabs,pyramid,uunet,oliveb,ames}!amdahl!kim DDD: 408-746-8462 USPS: Amdahl Corp. M/S 249, 1250 E. Arques Av, Sunnyvale, CA 94086 BIX: kdevaughn GEnie: K.DEVAUGHN CIS: 76535,25