Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bbn!oberon!pollux.usc.edu!papa
From: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: FULLY INTERACTIVE SCRIPTS (A Tutorial)
Message-ID: <9137@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 17 May 88 17:17:37 GMT
References: <8922@oberon.USC.EDU> <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <4697@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Sender: news@oberon.USC.EDU
Reply-To: papa@pollux.usc.edu (Marco Papa)
Organization: Felsina Software, Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 67

In article <4697@watdcsu.waterloo.edu| discat@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (G. Strachan Elec. Eng.) writes:
|In article <9927@agate.BERKELEY.EDU| pete@violet.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Pete Goodeve) writes:
||[Marco Papa writes (in <8922@oberon.USC.EDU|) about his program "getline"
||to be used with XICON...]
||Yeah!!  Many thanks, Marco!  I've been meaning to to write a "stupid little
||program" like that since I first wrote xicon, but somehow I never got to
||it.  As usual, the first person who REALLY needs it is the one who has
||to write it...
||Anyhow, it nicely fills the "Interaction Void" in that area.
|
|A while back I discovered that you can in fact create interactive scripts
|from the CLI without the need for little programs to print the message and
|read in the input etc.  I figured that it was fairly obvious and everyone
|else knew it too.  Now I am not so sure because people still seem to use
|these input programs.  If this is obvious I apologize.  Anyway here is how
|it works.  Ever wondered why Amigados scripts require you to specify the 
|number and name of arguments the script needs?  It needs this so the 
|Execute program can tell the user what the required parameters are if he
|asks with the '?' command.  Now once the Execute has printed out the required
|parameters it reads from standard input to get the parameters.  So this can
|be used to build an interactive script.  For example here is my startup
|sequence script.
|
|path sys:system add
|path sys:utilities add
|path sys:my_commands add
|BindDrivers
|mount pipe:
|Execute sys:s/loader ?
|
|where the script file loader is:
|
|.key "Load WorkBench (y/n)"
|if <Load WorkBench (y/n)$y| eq "y"
|LoadWb
|endcli |nil:
|else
|echo "Workbench not loaded"
|shell s:.login
|endif
|
|When the Amiga starts up it will print out the "Load Workbench (y/n)" prompt
|on the screen.  If I type in y it will load the workbench any other responce
|and it will not.  This method has the advantage over writing a simple program to
|get the input in that it is faster (no program to load) and is much more
|flexable.  The disadvantage is that only one input can be obtained per script.
|If you need more than one responce from the user then you have to put it in
|different scripts.

Nice try. Unfortunately it does NOT work with XICON (both versions from 
CBM or Pete), but only when executed by the CLI or through an Execute command.

In fact an article on "Execute file ?" was included in the last issue of 
Amazing Computing.  I don't know if it is a bug or feature of Execute or
AmigaDOS or what else but if you do an Execute name ? in the main XICON
script it will ask the question but it will NOT wait for the answer, and
in all my cases will go into an infinite loop on the next script instruction.

I had this bug report in my queue for sometime, but never got to send it
out.  Andy, consider this an official bug report.  Let me know if you need
any more details.

-- Marco Papa 'Doc'
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