Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!lll-tis!ptsfa!ihnp4!chinet!nucsrl!ram From: ram@nucsrl.UUCP (Renu Raman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions Subject: Re: vms vs unix Message-ID: <3680017@nucsrl.UUCP> Date: Fri, 22-May-87 01:08:24 EDT Article-I.D.: nucsrl.3680017 Posted: Fri May 22 01:08:24 1987 Date-Received: Sat, 23-May-87 16:24:29 EDT References: <7494@brl-adm.ARPA> Organization: Northwestern U, Evanston IL, USA Lines: 53 >Regardless of limits on the number of commands remembered, the command >editing facility of vms (invoked with up-arrow) is one of the few things >really nice about vms. Shell-writers' alert! such a facility would be a >very fine addition to unix. how unfortunate for vms that it only works (along >with everything else) if you have a vt100 or equivalent terminal. I'm >convinced that DEC waited until they were no longer making money from terminals >to support Ultrix! Heard of a shell called 'tcsh' (t-shell)? Well, its better than your vms command line history mechanism. You can bind any key to any of the built-in functions (just say "bind up_history <^char>". Also, command line editing is like EMACS. You can use arrow keys or any key to move left/right, delete word forward/backward, go to end of line/beginning of line...... Also inlcuded are goodies such as 1. Interactive file/directory listing. Just type "," and it lists files/directories under the current path. (If a , is hit before completing the first word in a command line or after a "|" symbol, it lists commands, in your path, that match the set of characters that you have typed. i.e. "uu," will result in uusend uulog uucp uuq ..... 2. Spelling correction of mispelt commands/files 3. Built-in "which" - Type a command and hit an escape sequencs (happens to be w in my case), you will get the path name for that command (it is faster than "which" or "whereis"). 4. Type ^ or ^@ after typing a command, lo and behold you will get the man page 'catted' on your screen. 5. Command line completion. If you have a file called "This_is_a_very_long_name". Just type say "less This" it will complete the file name for you. Isn't that neat. and many many more. It is a super-set of "csh" and wonder why it is not supported/distributed with standard BSD distributions. My guess is that if you have BSD license, you should be able to get this, but then again I could be wrong. Now I dare if VMS(DCL) has all these features. >Fred Sullivan >Dept. Math. Sci. >SUNY @ Binghamton >sullivan @ suny-bing.csnet ------------------- Renu Raman UUCP:...ihnp4!nucsrl!ram 1410 Chicago Ave., #505 ARPA:ram@eecs.nwu.edu Evanston IL 60201 AT&T:(312)-869-4276