Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ames!aurora!labrea!rocky!andy
From: andy@rocky.STANFORD.EDU (Andy Freeman)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: OS features
Message-ID: <871@rocky.STANFORD.EDU>
Date: 19 Dec 87 04:09:12 GMT
References: <1971@cup.portal.com> <1169@nmtsun.nmt.edu> <588@kuling.UUCP>
Reply-To: andy@rocky.UUCP (Andy Freeman)
Organization: Stanford University Computer Science Department
Lines: 29

In article <588@kuling.UUCP> irf@kuling.UUCP (Stellan Bergman) writes:
>In article <1169@nmtsun.nmt.edu> hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh) writes:
[explains how recognition works on TOPS-20]

>No, it is not since I have exactly the same behavior on my HP-UX 'csh' (and
>also on the 'tcsh' on the VAX 4.2BSD I'm running at this moment.

No you don't have exactly the same behavior.  You have recognition for
command names and arguments that are file names.  TOPS-20 command parser
provides recognition for arguments that aren't file names as well as
those that are.  You can also ask it what arguments are legal.

TOPS-20's command parser is also used by almost every native TOPS-20
program.  How many unix programs have tcsh's (or 4.3BSD's csh's)
recognition?  There is a TOPS-20-like command parser for unix and using
something that good will be common in 20 years.  So what if TOPS-20
is about as old as unix and has had it for 10 years?  Unix' superiority
is that it is portable - it's not dead and TOPS-20 is.

-andy

ps - Getopt IS a big advance for unix, but in the grand unix tradition,
it does too little and is probably subtly incompatible with what it is
supposed to be patterned after.  The former can be blamed on unix.
-- 
Andy Freeman
UUCP:  {arpa gateways, decwrl, sun, hplabs, rutgers}!sushi.stanford.edu!andy
ARPA:  andy@sushi.stanford.edu
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