Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!claris!drc
From: drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Mac Interface v. "Command Line" interface debates
Keywords: regular expressions
Message-ID: <7958@claris.com>
Date: 9 Jan 89 03:01:02 GMT
References: <15213@mimsy.UUCP> <958@esquire.UUCP> <2969@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Reply-To: drc@claris.com (Dennis Cohen)
Organization: Claris Corporation, Mountain View CA
Lines: 74

In article <2969@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> bmartin@uhccux.UUCP (Brian Martin) writes:
>There have been a number of times where I've wanted to drop into
>a command line interface and type a little Bourne/Korn-shell style script
>to do a global change to a group of files. For example, before shipping
>a group of nroff source files to the Mac, for conversion to Word,
>I run a sed script which replaces EOL chars with SPACE chars when necessary,
>leaving the blank lines unchanged (so they can be interpreted as paragraph
>marks). Or I might want to change a filename suffix from ".l" to ".c",
>with a script such as
>
>	for i in *.l
>	do mv $i `basename $i .l`.c
>	done
>
>Or how about 
>
>	grep '^Subject.*RSG' * */*
>
>Really quite simple on a UNIX box, but difficult on the Mac.
>
I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing very easy to do on the
Mac -- use MPW.  The wildcards are different and most of the tool names differ,
but the tools and capabilities are there.

>I also rely heavily on the ability to pipe data between existing tools
>such as awk, sort, uniq, sed and join for the analysis of large free-text
>databases.
>
Again, use MPW for this sort of capability.

>
>Changing the subject a bit--why aren't regular expressions supported on
>Mac word processing or database products?  Here, I'm referring to the
>full complement offered by programs such as egrep. It would seem pretty
>simple to port the "re_comp" and "re_exec" routines from the UNIX system
>to a Mac program. (The command "mac regex" gets you a short synopsis of
>these routines.) Some of the software I've developed in the past has
>used these routines liberally.
>
Regular expressions are supported by Qued/M, MPW, Lightspeed C, and a number of
other products.  Some simplified expression-matching is provided by MS Word,
FullWrite, and other word processors.  In general, they aren't provided because
the desire for them is rather small compared to the demand for "simplified and
intuitive" interfaces.  For the users of software development products, such
capabilities abound because there was a demand for them -- for users of word
processors and databases, the demand hasn't been there.  Some simplified
pattern matching exists in dBASE Mac and 4th Dimension, but even there, the
majority of the users I've talked to don't use those capabilities usually
because they say that it's not "Macish" (a great, nebulous term).

** FLAME ON (low heat setting) **

Unix is an extremely powerful environment.  I use it a lot and appreciate
the flexibility it gives me.  I also know that it isn't for the masses because
they don't understand it and don't want to take the time to learn a new
language and methodology--especially one they find cryptic.

Why can't the people on this net realize that we are a somewhat biased
sample and not representative of the mainstream Mac market.  In most respects
we are a vertical market owing to our background and exposure to alternate
approaches.  We are not even a significant market when you consider that there
are probably more copies of MS Word, FileMaker II, MacDraw II, or Excel sold
in any two or three month period than there have been copies of LSC sold in
the history of the product -- and it is probably the single most successful
development product on the Mac.

** FLAME OFF **


Dennis Cohen
Claris Corp.
------------
Disclaimer:  Any opinions expressed above are _MINE_!
	(although others of you may share some of them)