Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!indri!lll-winken!uunet!algor2!jeffrey
From: jeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Unix deficiencies/problems
Summary: Formal file names vindicated from every criticism!
Message-ID: <429@algor2.UUCP>
Date: 8 May 89 00:55:56 GMT
References: <810038@hpsemc.HP.COM> <810046@hpsemc.HP.COM> <159@dg.dg.com> <424@algor2.UUCP> <676@dtscp1.UUCP>
Reply-To: jeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler)
Organization: Algorists, Inc., Reston VA
Lines: 46

In article <676@dtscp1.UUCP> scott@dtscp1.UUCP (Scott Barman) writes:
=In article <424@algor2.UUCP> jeffrey@algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler) writes:
==I miss very little from the IBM world, but the availability of formal file
==names is one of them.  
=
=Is this anything like trying to remember which utilities wants their
=input from ddname SYSUT1 or SYSIN?  Or ourput to SYSOUT or SYSPRINT
=or even SYSUT2?
=
=I do not miss anything from that world!!!!

It might have been more politic if I had mentioned that most of my experience
with formal file names comes from a proprietary (and I assume extinct) HP
operating system called MPE.  So the idea is not really an IBM one, though
most people who have run into it will know it through JCL.  It is probably
JCL's *only* nice feature.

The problem of memorizing a multiplicity of names, is definitely there, but
inherent in the problem.  Memorizing a lot of option letters, different for
each utility, is also hard (though multi-letter options would have been nice).

The claim that restricting formal file descriptors to 3 makes them easy to
memorize, while true, is a little like the Mac mouse's claim that having
only one button made it easy to use.  Then along come applications which
require double and triple clicking.

Really what Scott is saying is that he has never come across an application
requiring more than SYSIN, SYSOUT and SYSERR.  He probably has.  They
certainly exist.

Databases I mentioned.  Sdb really needs a least 2 sets of the 3 formal
file names, one for itself and one for the program being debugged.  More
complex debugging situations than this are easy to imagine.  Any of you who
have quarreled with another developer over the fact that he was putting out
too many debugging messages, really could use a SYSLOG in addition to
SYSERR.  A transaction oriented environment where enough bucks are at stake
will attract auditors who want several logs.  A lot of larger applications
require you to declare half a dozen environment variables telling you where
the files it wants are.

And are SYSIN, SYSOUT and SYSERR really harder to remember than 0, 1 and 2?
-- 

Jeffrey Kegler, President, Algorists,
jeffrey@algor2.UU.NET or uunet!algor2!jeffrey
1762 Wainwright DR, Reston VA 22090