Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!spool2.mu.edu!samsung!rex!ukma!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!abvax!iccgcc!herrickd From: herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com (daniel lance herrick) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: How wrong is MS-DOS? (or: What is the definition of obsolete) Message-ID: <2807.27918e67@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com> Date: 14 Jan 91 15:56:38 GMT References: <11123@lanl.gov> <1991Jan13.024453.13899@ingres.Ingres.COM> Lines: 25 In article , spot@CS.CMU.EDU (Scott Draves) writes: > > I do *not* want to write a program every time I want to search a file > for a word. The stuff I write with shell (pipes and all those funny > utilities) are mostly one-shot hacks. Something I need done now and > probably not ever again in the future. So "rapid prototyping" is > *exactly* what I want. > > If you are saying you would never write production code in csh using > all those utilities, then I agree. And so will (nearly?) everyone > else. That would be slow and gross. > I was amazed when I first started poking around a UNIX system how much of the Operating System was written in sh (not csh) using those trivialities like grep. Maybe csh is slow and gross, but things like the disk sweeper that searches the disk for files that can be thrown away, the line printer interface program that takes a file and cats it with some other things to the printer device,..... They are production code. They are within the reach of the system manager to customize easily. They run at suitable performance levels. And they are all over the system! dan herrick herrickd@iccgcc.decnet.ab.com