Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!lanl!jlg
From: jlg@lanl.gov (Jim Giles)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: UNIX mind-set  (was: How wrong is MS-DOS?)
Message-ID: <11313@lanl.gov>
Date: 14 Jan 91 01:23:14 GMT
References: <8148@hub.ucsb.edu>
Organization: Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, N.M.
Lines: 20

From article <8148@hub.ucsb.edu>, by tom@bears.ucsb.edu (Tom Weinstein):
> [...]
> And you've been using UNIX for ten years?  The shell does wildcard
> substitution, not ls.  You could just as easily type 'echo x*y'.

Yes, you could type 'echo x*y' - which would write the string 'x*y'
on your terminal.  The shell does no wildcard substitution on any
argument _automatically_.  The tool has to ask for the functionality.

Doesn't effect the validity of my previous point any.  The use of
'ls x*y' is redundant with 'ls | grep x*y' in contradiction to the
"one tool = one simple function" paradigm.  In fact, the paradigm
itself is a fraud.  Nearly all UNIX tools have options and arguments
which cause them to do several distinct things.  The difference between
that state of affairs and the one I would recommend is that the UNIX
tools each implement a rag-tag assortment of capabilities.  What I
recommend is that each tool implement a complete set of closely
related functions in a well thought out way.

J. Giles