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From: mcg@shark.UUCP (Steven McGeady)
Newsgroups: net.cog-eng
Subject: Re: re: tops-20 command 'language'
Message-ID: <1447@shark.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Aug-83 18:57:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: shark.1447
Posted: Sun Aug 21 18:57:37 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Aug-83 23:29:39 EDT
References: sask.290
Lines: 23


I think that the major reason why tops-20 style command completion
will never work on UNIX, or more modern operating systems is that
UNIX is a much "richer" environment than tops-20. That is to say,
on tops-20 there may be as many as 50 commands. On a typical UNIX
system there are well over 200 (on our system there are 548).
It is not that UNIX is bloated, its just that you can do *more things*.

BTW, on our system, the t<esc> example would return this:

t tab tinker today tar tee test time tp true t300 t300s t4025 t450 tabs
tail tbl tc tek tk touch tp300 tr troff tsort tty talk td tekroff temacs
tf tpcopy troll trouble tsh tekecs telnet tra trman
trpt tset

(42 commands) and it is not the most popular initial letter.

My point is: command completion may have worked fin on tops-20,
but don't try to apply it to UNIX, or any reasonably rich operating
environment.

S. McGeady
Tektronix, Inc.