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From: lphillips@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca (Larry Phillips)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech
Subject: Re: PIPEs
Message-ID: <2193@lpami.wimsey.bc.ca>
Date: 5 Nov 90 20:29:37 GMT
Lines: 27
Return-Path: <lpami!lphillips>
To: van-bc!rnews

In <1990Nov5.021744.3349@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu>, yarnall@opusc.csd.scarolina.edu (Ken Yarnall) writes:
>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...")

Sure, and lets do away with the convention of requiring whitespace between the
command and arguments, and between argument too. :-)

Seriously, if it weren't for the ability of Unix shells to accept the pipe
operator without delimiting whitespace, it would be a complete non-issue.
Nobody would even think to question it.

-larry

--
It is not possible to both understand and appreciate Intel CPUs.
    -D.Wolfskill
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|   //   Larry Phillips                                                 |
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