Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!nuchat!sugar!peter
From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: OS features
Message-ID: <1286@sugar.UUCP>
Date: 20 Dec 87 13:47:13 GMT
References: <1971@cup.portal.com> <1169@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX
Lines: 22
Summary: Not quite.

hydrovax@nmtsun.nmt.edu (M. Warner Losh) writes:
> From what I have seen, it appears that the symbolic names (which
> I read as logical names.  Somebody correct me if I'm wrong) to 
> be a superset of enviornment symbols.

Nope, because symbolic names are early-bound. Environment symbols are
late-bound. You can't define a logical name for a file that doesn't
exist at define time. Also, environment symbols are context-free: you
don't have to have a filename there.

For example, I use SET to define my path for include files instead of
ASSIGN on the Amiga, because I may not have the include disk mounted
during the boot process. The coimpiler knows about SET and pulls it
out at run-time.

Secondly (and more importantly), you can't define a logical name for
such things as PATH and ROGUEOPTS, because they're not simple file names.

I'd much rather have both.
-- 
-- Peter da Silva  `-_-'  ...!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter
-- Disclaimer: These U aren't mere opinions... these are *values*.