Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cbmvax!jesup
From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: Pipes
Message-ID: <12373@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 7 Jun 90 00:21:11 GMT
References: <2533@zipeecs.umich.edu> <136735@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> <1990Jun6.104643.15176@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 27

In article <1990Jun6.104643.15176@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) writes:
>Looking at the Amiga implementation, like looking at the choice of "#?" for
>the wildcard (that I for one use on over half my typed lines), rather than
>the single keystroke "*", brings to mind the same question:  "Why did the
>Amiga developers go to the time, trouble, and expense  to design and
>implement something poorly, when an example of how to do it much better was
>conveniently at hand?"

	The #? comes from Tripos, back from the early '80's in England.
It's historical, not "not invented here".  2.0 has far more capable wildcards,
with classes, ~(not), etc.  Even * if you set a flag in the system, though not
by default so we don't break existing scripts and apps.

	As for pipes, there are any number of third party shells that have
the '|' syntax, just as in Unix there are any number of alternate shells that
have better editing than csh or sh.  Once again, turning '|' into a piping
character would break existing scripts and applications.

	2.0 also has improved support for "user shells", so programs can
submit things generated by the user to his/her preferred interactive shell,
while continuing to send program-generated command lines through the
normal shell (so things like syntax differences won't break them).

-- 
Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Common phrase heard at Amiga Devcon '89: "It's in there!"