Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!clyde.concordia.ca!maxwell!smw
From: smw@maxwell.Concordia.CA ( Steven Winikoff )
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Need input for future DOS release
Summary: Switchchar, aliases, wildcards, path length, etc.
Keywords: future DOS release
Message-ID: <2017@clyde.concordia.ca>
Date: 22 Mar 90 16:43:12 GMT
References: <53686@microsoft.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@clyde.concordia.ca
Reply-To: smw@maxwell.Concordia.CA ( Steven Winikoff )
Organization: Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec
Lines: 53

In article <53686@microsoft.UUCP> gordonl@microsoft.UUCP (Gordon LETWIN) writes:
>Microsoft is working on a major upgrade to DOS and I'd like to solicit
>input from the "power user" communitiy.  I've never met a programmer who
>didn't think that they could have "done it better" with regards to someone
>else's product, so here's an opportunity to enlighten us.
>				.
>				.
>				.
>So, if you've ever wished that DOS was better in some way (and who hasn't?),
>email your input to me at
>
>	uunet!microsoft!gordonl

I'm sure this will really spark a long discussion!  In any case, while I know
that Gordon asked for mail, I'm posting this to see how other people feel 
about these ideas...

My personal short list of pet peeves about DOS (as a user interface) are all
things that would be addressed by a "better" shell.  I know that there are
others out there (eg 4DOS, MKS Korn shell, etc.), but I prefer to stick with
the "standard" one so that I know I won't get bitten by incompatibilities
while developing software to run under DOS.

(I currently use DOS 3.3, and have never seen 4.x, so I apologize in advance
if any of the following are already implemented.)

In any case, off the top of my head, some things I'd like to see:

1) A way that works, consistently across all commands (built-in or otherwise),
   to change the switch character and path separator character (so that I can 
   make DOS look more like Unix!)

2) Interpreting the asterisk in wildcard expressions similarly to how it's
   done in Unix (eg handle things like *X.* by generating a list of all
   files whose names end with the letter X, regardless of extension --
   something that DOS 3.3 provides no way to accomplish).

3) Aliases and some sort of command history (currently provided by third
   parties, of course, but there's no standard mechanism).

4) An easy, standard way to express search paths of arbitrary length (subject
   to environment space limits, of course!)  It would also be nice, IMHO, to
   have a (separate?) search path for data files.

I'm sure I could come up with more if I thought about it long enough, but these
alone would be enough to get me to switch to a newer version.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Winikoff                                 smw@maxwell.concordia.ca
Software Analyst
Dept. of Computing services
Concordia University                            voice: (514) 848-7619
Montreal, Quebec, Canada                               (10:00-18:00 EST)