Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!dptcdc!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!snll-arpagw!paolucci
From: paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: more 1.4 wishes
Message-ID: <61@snll-arpagw.UUCP>
Date: 4 Mar 89 03:32:11 GMT
References: <4Y3LOgy00WB7NFUmZh@andrew.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: paolucci@snll-arpagw.UUCP (Sam Paolucci)
Organization: Sandia National Labs, Livermore, CA
Lines: 25

I would like to see AmigaDOS grow up into a full blown command
language which supports looping, testing (and I don't just mean WARN
and all that crap), branching (like a goto (god forbid) so you can go
back up in a script), variables, etc.

I think AmigaDOS is a very weak part of the Amiga.  Because of its
very severe limitations you have to perform all kinds of contortions
in order to accomplish something simple.  Or worse still, you have to
write a program.  All you have to do is look at the ASK command.  You
can only use it for YES/NO questions, and even then you cannot even
just test for YES/NO, you have to test for error condition flags.  Can
anybody tell me what YES/NO has anything to do with error levels?
This is a bunch of crap and it makes reading and writing scripts
harder than it needs to be.  Mind you this is only one example among
many.  And ASK was not even available until 1.3 (I know, some people
got it between 1.2 and 1.3).  And there is a lot more that simply
cannot be done by writing a simple AmigaDOS script because AmigaDOS is
very weak.

Well, that's my two cents.
-- 
					-+= SAM =+-
"the best things in life are free"

				ARPA: paolucci@snll-arpagw.llnl.gov