Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!usc!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!art100
From: ART100@psuvm.psu.edu (Andy Tefft)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
Subject: Re: BinSCII 1.0.3
Message-ID: <90311.215336ART100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 8 Nov 90 02:53:36 GMT
References: <1990Nov7.170018.23318@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
 <1990Nov07.223449.6374@hoss.unl.edu>
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 22

In article <1990Nov07.223449.6374@hoss.unl.edu>, greg@hoss.unl.edu (Hammer T.
H.) says:
>
>By the way, the commands EXEC, RUN, and BRUN have become obsolete.  The -
>command will work with all those filetypes, including SYS files.

Not obsolete at all. Sometimes type checking is desirable.
The typical way to do things the applesoft way has always been
to do an operation on a file and check any error codes rather
than try and dig up file info. e.g. rather than look at the directory
(ok, so this isn't so hard to do in prodos) to check for the
existence of a file, you do an operation on it, like verify or
unlock. If it's there, no error.

This can be extended to a the exec, run, and brun commands.
A program which is going to execute another program would not
like to just charge blindly in and '-' it the possibility might
exist that an incorrect program might be named what the first
program is looking for.

Kind of difficult to explain. But extend it a bit further - why
have filetypes at all? why not just file permissions like Unix?