Path: utzoo!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!bnr-public!schow From: schow@bnr-public.uucp (Stanley Chow) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: AmigaDos vs Unix wildcards/pathnames Message-ID: <353@bnr-fos.UUCP> Date: 19 Mar 89 10:26:57 GMT References: <11241@ut-emx.UUCP> <6306@cbmvax.UUCP> Sender: news@bnr-fos.UUCP Reply-To: schow@bnr-public.UUCP (Stanley Chow) Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 74 In article <6306@cbmvax.UUCP> daveh@cbmvax.UUCP (Dave Haynie) writes: >in article <11241@ut-emx.UUCP>, mjl@ut-emx.UUCP (Maurice LeBrun) says: > >> To sum up, I still see the following things as being important: > >> o '*' accepted as a universal wildcard > >If you still think this is important, you're still missing my point. '*' in >AmigaDOS means "stdio" or "stdin", depending on where it's used. It's not >an AmigaDOS wild card, it's used in UNIX and MS-DOS as such (though with >slightly different meaning). If AmigaDOS lacked that kind of wild card, >I'd say fine. But continuing to insist on AmigaDOS adding '*' is just >reflecting your personal biases. > I agree with Dave. The AmigaDOS wildcard convention is perfectly adequate (in fact, I think it is nicer than most). > >> o Unix relative pathnames accepted anywhere AmigaDos pathnames are. >> (Maybe some real incompatibilities here, I'm unsure) >> This last thing would be nice, but probably not essential. > >No, no, no! You want UNIX, go buy UNIX. Again, I can't see a standard >UNIX adpoting AmigaDOS path conventions, and until they do, I can't see >why AmigaDOS should adpot UNIX path conventions. Next thing you know, >someone's going to be demanding AmigaDOS also understand the evil >VAX/VMS path conventions. Get real! > Well, I don't want Unix. I am already forced to have a HP 9000 on my desk at work. I don't want my Amiga to adopt the dreadful Unix syntax. (I will admit it is nice to have a fast Unix box for reading news :-). The requests sounded very funny. As Dave says, you want Unix, you buy Unix. I am very happy with Amiga. Why should I trade in a fast Amiga for a slow Unix? Especailly when Unix has all those weirdo command syntaxes? Next thing you know, someone is going to ask for all editors be vi-compatible. In particular, the Unix convention of expanding wildcard in the shell strikes me as very silly. I wasn't around when it was introduced, but I would guess that early Unix had not wildcard, then some wizard wanted to add wildcard but did not want to chagne every program, so the shell was chosen. (I am surely several thounsand people will now tell me a committee of the top ergonometrist studied the problem and designed the Unix solution). Consider the problems of expanding wildcard in the shell: - increditably long lines are passed around. - i type in "foo*", the shell looks through the directory and picks up all matching names, pasts them together, then the application program goes through each name and looks through the directory again. Even with good hashing and caching, this is still silly. - Many commands end up with really strange silly syntax since the shell ends up mucking up the parameters. Ever considered my Unix has no RENAME command? In MS-DOS, I can do 'rename *.foo *.bar', try that on Unix. - The shell does not know which parameters are filenames and ends up expanding them all. This means I have to escape '*'. Unix have far too many funny characters, why should Amiga be draged down to the same level? I really thank that the arp people have it right: provide a set of library routines for the expansion operations. This makes the shell easier, the application smaller and faster, and makes the syntax of commands easier to comprehand. Stanley Chow ..!utgpu!bnr-vpa!bnr-fos!schow%bnr-public (613) 763-2831 What? Me? Say something bad about Unix? When the company is buying them by the hundreds? Come on, I like what I am doing so it must have been someone else pretending to be me.