Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!hplabs!hp-pcd!hpcvca!charles From: charles@hpcvca.HP.COM (Charles Brown) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Enviroment (was Re: Yea, but can an Amiga Shell do this....) Message-ID: <5660011@hpcvca.HP.COM> Date: 27 Aug 88 03:41:26 GMT References: <8808192105.AA16960@cory.Berkeley.EDU> Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, Oregon Lines: 91 >:There is a way to do it, which is to have a subdirectory for each >:process in the tree. When a child process looks for a given context >:variable, it looks in its own subdirectory first, then, if it doesn't >:find the given variable, it looks in its parent's directory and so on. >:This gives inheritance behavior using a file-structured device and >:without duplication of data. This sounds workable if the routines for doing this are provided as standard librarys. If you ask individual programmers to go thru that, there will be a lot of code that just does not work right. > For instance, if you ran an editor TWICE and want to give EACH >a different enviroment, it requires a certain amount of sophistication. >Too much to be worth it, I think. Sure, you can do it, but whos gonna >want to do it? If I didn't want to be able to do this I would not have brought it up. I think the flat ENV: approach is too limiting in a programming context. Isn't this one of the reasons BASIC fell into disrepute? All of its variables are flat. > Right! How about this: Implement softlinks by allocating one of >those precious protection bits! Make it mean 'softlink', where the contents >of the comment field would then be the link path. It would be nice if >somebody could hack the filesystem to do this automagically. That is an excellent idea! It should be done regardless of what is done with ENV:. > Oh yucc. I figure enviroment variables should be *easy* to >manipulate. What we need is some distinction between IFF and a simple >text string. How about this: I agree. I sometimes would like to be able to edit the environment using a text editor. ------------------------------------------------------------ >:transporting software (and brainware) more difficult. In fact, >:Amigados has a clear inferiority in that it cannot refer to current >:directory which Unix does with ".". So why was AmigaDos done this >:way? Well, just because... > Just becuase it ISN'T UNIX. Nobody said UNIX is the only way to >do it. I have had more problems transporting files between UNIX machines >than I ever had porting them to the Amiga. Little things like many UNIXs >support only 14 character file names. Oops. "Just because it isn't Unix" is a poor reason to be inferior. I also am not saying that Unix is the only way to do it. I am saying that as long as a we do not have a clearly superior mechanism, the mechanism should be copied from an existing system. Unix is just an example that I am familiar with. > And anyway, I never liked that fact that one had to specifically >check for and ignore '.' and '..' when scanning UNIX directories. I like >the fact that the parent specifier is NOT in the directory ("/"), and the >fact that the current directory specifier is NOT in the directory (""). Thus, >one does not have any special cases within the directory itself. This is an implementation detail that could have been done differently with little effort. I know of a Unix-like system which does not have actual . and .. entries in the directory. The path parsing code is modified to treat . and .. as keywords. >:If Amiga is going to change the paradigm for envariables, how about >:something that IS superior? ...... > Of course, we have already discussed this to death but... The general >answer is YES it can be done, but must be implemented in the programming >of the software rather than in the system UNLESS we agree on a creating a >new 'user' library which contains the appropriate functions (and does all >of this automatically). I just want my system to be powerful, fast, flexible, and easy to use. Is that too much to ask? (Sigh...) >>when it does not provide significant advantage in the deviation) the >>more the Amiga will be ignored by commercial software developers, and >>the more the Amiga will become "just a niche computer". > Oh bull shit. The Amiga might very well remain "just a niche >computer" to the majority of the CS world, but it isn't going to be because >it isn't UNIX. > -Matt I am not asking for Unix. I am asking for better. -- Charles Brown charles%hpcvca@hplabs.hp.com Definitely not representing my employer.