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From: std-unix@ut-sally.UUCP (Moderator, John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: mod.std.unix
Subject: Re: job control
Message-ID: <6176@ut-sally.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Oct-86 20:25:37 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-sally.6176
Posted: Thu Oct 30 20:25:37 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 31-Oct-86 03:27:08 EST
References: <6014@ut-sally.UUCP> <6001@ut-sally.UUCP> <5965@ut-sally.UUCP> <5932@ut-sally.UUCP> <5991@ut-sally.UUCP>
Organization: IEEE P1003 Portable Operating System for Computer Environments Committee
Lines: 36
Keywords: horrible
Approved: jsq@sally.utexas.edu

From: seismo!mcvax!jack
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
Last-Band-Seen: Eton Crop, That Petrol Emotion (Paradiso, 30-09).
Opinion-Of-Them: Two good and honest guitar bands....
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 86 23:39:03 +0100

I waited for some time, thinking someone else would point this out,
but nobody did, so here goes:

*CURRENT JOB CONTROL IMPLEMENTATIONS ARE HORRIBLE. HORRIBLE! 
HORRIBLE!!!!!!!!*

After reading David Lennart's (sp?) article on 4.2 job control,
SYSV shell layers, and HP-UX's hybrid I was shocked, I must admit.

Both solutions are filled with horrible tricks like closing
tty's and re-opening them and then doing funny ioctl()s and the closing
them again and then reopening then and then...

It is of course a praiseworthy feat that the folks at HP managed to
sqeeze those two horrible, inconsistent, unintellegible mechanisms
into one poor kernel, but I'm afraid the result is horrible**2.

I think that, if nobody can come up with a nice&clean subset of
job control facilities, that will allow sysV and BSD semantics to
be implemented on top of them, we should forget about standardising
anything. Standardising bad mechanisms will only hinder progress
(Did I hear someone say F77? X25?).

>From now on, you can find me in the "job control is horrible" camp.
--
	Jack Jansen, jack@mcvax.UUCP
	The shell is my oyster.


Volume-Number: Volume 8, Number 10