Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!haven!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Norton utilities for UNIX (was: drawtree for Unix/Sun/curses?)
Message-ID: <11758@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 6 Dec 89 18:48:13 GMT
References: <5250@abaa.UUCP> <11976@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 26

In article <11976@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik Saligrama Subbarao) writes:
>    Here is a question I have been wanting to ask for a long time but
> always forgot to. WHY doesn't someone make a whole NORTON UTILITES
> for UNIX? I mean, it is SO easy to unerase files in MS-DOS. If UNIX
> is a superior operating system, why hasn't someone come up with a 
> qu command to unerase files, an ncd to change directories and some of
> the other goodies we get with the Norton Utilities 4.5 Advanced
> Edition?

UNIX is a multi-user, multi-processing, timesharing system; consequently,
if you mistakenly remove the last link to a file (does Norton give you
links?), the data blocks having been reclaimed by the system are likely
to have been overwritten by other processes before you have time to take
remedial action.

Also note that UNIX implements inter-user access protection, so a random
user cannot access the raw disk as would be required to fiddle around
like most such utility packages.

>				-Is UNIX really superior ???

Sure.  On UNIX you can easily implement any number of solutions to the
accidental deletion "problem" (if it seems to be a problem for you).

The very aspects of UNIX which make raw disk diddlers infeasible are
among the features that make it powerful.