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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Filenames, ARGH!!
Message-ID: <1990Jan21.165823.24367@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 21 Jan 90 16:58:23 GMT
References: <7612@shlump.nac.dec.com>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery)
Followup-To: comp.sys.mac
Organization: North Coast Public Access UN*X, Cleveland, OH
Lines: 47

As quoted from <7612@shlump.nac.dec.com> by long@mcntsh.enet.dec.com (Richard C. Long):
+---------------
| In article <591@lectroid.sw.stratus.com>, lennox@paris.sw.stratus.com (Craig Scott Lennox) writes...
| >I'm trying to write a csh for a Mac SE.  Say what you like, but there are some
| >times when you need to type commands rather than mouse them.
| 
| Funny you bring this up!  I've been working off and on (well, more off than
| on) on one of these for a while.  One idea that struck me immediately (since I
| work on VMS) was to use a method similar to that of VMS' DCL, i.e. to quote
| the filenames.
+---------------

IBM VM/CMS uses a rather strange convention for file names: the file extension
is separated from the name by a space.  This, of course, causes some problems
for the CLI, which are solved by the use of keywords.  (e.g. COPY FOO PASCAL
TO BAR PASCAL -- because there is a *third* part possible in a filename, the
"file mode" which identifies the virtual minidisk and some other attributes,
the keyword is required.)

This would, of course, be a bit more difficult on a Mac because in the VM/CMS
environment there is a maximum filename size in space-delimited words (three,
the name, type, and mode), so if a file type just happens to be "TO" you can
get around it by giving the full name including the file mode; the Mac doesn't
have this limitation, so it can't use this trick.  However, it does suggest
some possibilities for handling file names which can contain spaces.

One other possibility:  use multi-line commands.

Copy User HD:Communications:Telecommunicators:ZTerm:ZTerm 0.85
To User HD:Backups:ZTerm 0.85

From the keyboard, RETURN would make a continuation line and ENTER would
execute the constructed command.  One would need to indicate the beginning of
a command somehow, say by a blank line.  Multiple file names could be simply
listed one per line, or you could invent conjunctions:  "Copy file1 And file2
To Folder".

I would advise having a way to use SFGetFile on these, perhaps with a command-
key combination.  Paths can get pretty long, as shown above (the first path
really does exist on my hard drive).

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery    allbery@NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi)
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