Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!munnari.oz.au!metro!cluster!tmx!brahman!melb.bull.oz.au!sjg From: sjg@melb.bull.oz.au (Simon J Gerraty) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: UNIX mind-set (was: How wrong is MS-DOS?) Message-ID: <1991Jan19.005255.2739@melb.bull.oz.au> Date: 19 Jan 91 00:52:55 GMT References: <1991Jan13.113349.21937@ims.alaska.edu> <11305@lanl.gov> Organization: Bull HN Information Systems Australia. Lines: 30 In <11305@lanl.gov> jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles) writes: >From article <1991Jan13.113349.21937@ims.alaska.edu>, by floyd@ims.alaska.edu (Floyd Davidson): >> [...] >> The advantage of UNIX is that tools are trivial to the point of >> doing just one basic thing. As a result each user can easily >> build larger tools to do *anything*. [...] >By this logic, ls doesn't fit the paradigm. I can (on any UNIX) >do 'ls x*y' and get all the files whos names begin with x and end >with y. By the paradigm you just stated, I _should_ have to do >'ls | grep x*y'. The fact is, _even_ the UNIX implementors realized >that ls should have a built-in filter on file names. My claim is Could we please all drop this useless discussion? People are slagging off at OS's with out any understanding of what they are talking about. For the record, under UNIX the _shell_ expands x*y not ls. Under MS-DOS, each command has to do its own wild-card matching because COMMAND.COM does not. I beleive Mr. Giles has simply helped Mr. Davidson make his point. Besides religous issues like "my favourite {editor,OS,drink,...} is {emacs,unix,coke,...} because ..." are never solved by arguments, rational or otherwise. -- Simon J. Gerraty #include