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From: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: AmigaDOS script hacking: flames
Message-ID: <4537@jade.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Fri, 31-Jul-87 03:28:02 EDT
Article-I.D.: jade.4537
Posted: Fri Jul 31 03:28:02 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 1-Aug-87 21:09:05 EDT
References: <1249@spice.cs.cmu.edu>
Sender: usenet@jade.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: mwm@eris.BERKELEY.EDU (Mike (My watch has windows) Meyer)
Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica
Lines: 54

In article <1249@spice.cs.cmu.edu> mjp@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Michael Portuesi) writes:
<DIR, while offering an option to do a recursive directory list, also
<outputs its information in a two-column format that is impossible to
<parse with EDIT.  LIST, while offering a listing that is easily
<interpreted by other programs, does not offer a recursive directory
<search.  Grrr.

I had similar problems. LIST gives me tabs, but SORT didn't believe in
them, and would only sort on a specific *character* column. So I wrote
a quickie detaber. No biggie.

<It is easy to run EDIT in batch mode.  It is easy to
<use ECHO to create a command file for EDIT.  But when the necessary
<commands for EDIT exceed one line, you're hosed because ECHO can only
<handle one line of input, and AmigaDOS doesn't know how to redirect
<output by appending to the end of a file!

Uh, I didn't have that kind of problem. Then again, I didn't try to
make echo do something it wasn't intended to do. I used edit to create
the multi-line edit script. Worked like a charm.

<	1) The CLI and the EXECUTE command are unsuitable for
<	   general-purpose shell hacking.
<
<	2) The AmigaDOS commands weren't written with batch processing
<	   of any type in mind.

True. Something that those writing replacements need to consider.

<	3) Not only is EDIT a lose as an interactive line editor, it
<	   is also a very bad stream editor.

I don't agree. Edit is a *far* better stream editor than Unix ed. For
anything complicated, it's better than sed. The builtin ability
to loop, as opposed to the "all commands on every line" of sed is a
win. [Warning: the abilities of awk have kept me from really learning
the magic of sed.] Edit isn't an awk, but it's fairly powerfull.


<	4) I'll try this again with Matt's Shell at the earliest
<	   opportunity.

Also make *sure* you've got a pipe: driver. Things run a *lot* faster
with it. You can get one from MetaComCo, Matt has one that's PD, and
Ed Puckett has one that includes a nifty feature called "taps" which
let you look at what's going through the pipe (among other things).
The last showed up on the net, and is the one I'd recommend.

	<mike
--
Must have walked those streets for hours,		Mike Meyer
In the dark and in the cold,				mwm@berkeley.edu
Before I really could accept,				ucbvax!mwm
There's no place called hope road.			mwm@ucbjade.BITNET