Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!emory!hubcap!ncrcae!opusc!yarnall
From: yarnall@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu (Ken Yarnall)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: PIPEs
Message-ID: <1990Nov5.021744.3349@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu>
Date: 5 Nov 90 02:17:44 GMT
References: <1990Nov3.073201.8227@agate.berkeley.edu> <6977@sugar.hackercorp.com> <1990Nov4.195838.25540@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Math Department, University of South Carolina (ahem; The USC)
Lines: 33

In article <1990Nov4.195838.25540@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> lrg7030@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Loren  Rittle) writes:
+Peter da Silva writes:
+> The version 6 shell and the version 7 (bourne) shell use either '|' or '^'
+> as a pipe character. I understand that at least one Amiga shell requires
+> pipes to have white-space around them. The use of '^' might be a better
+> alternative, even if it will break c-shell history (which is something
+> I want, weird though that might sound to some of you).
+
+The shell of which you speak is the WShell v1.2 (highly recommended :-).
+It does indeed ``force'' you to have white-space on the leading edge of
+the pipe symbol, which defaults to `|', but can be changed via the
+WShell-config file to be any symbol you desire.  Because Bill enforces
+the white-space before pipe symbol rule in the WShell, there is no 
+way it could be mixed up with AmigaOS pattern matching.
+Have your burger, your way, some might say...

Making the idiot user include whitespace or not seems to be an awkward way of
handling it, to me.  How do I remember if I should throw a space in, of if it
isn't allowed?  Just be a little flexible, come up wita a new symbol for
pipes (c'mon, guys... `->' is the way to go...), and stick with it.  Seems to
me that in any `modern' command-line interface, enforcing the amount of
whitespace between tokens is clumsy ("In columns 1-10 appear the command
name.  Column 12 contains the optional redirection symbol `<'.  If
present...")

+Loren J. Rittle

ken
-- 
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