Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!rutgers!mcnc!ecsvax.uncecs.edu!dukeac!wolves!ggw From: ggw@wolves.uucp (Gregory G. Woodbury) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: Stoopid *nix freaks! Summary: more wasted bandwidth! Message-ID: <1990Feb27.044427.670@wolves.uucp> Date: 27 Feb 90 04:44:27 GMT References: <16155@smunews.UUCP> <90055.133555GILLA@QUCDN.BITNET> Reply-To: ggw@wolves.UUCP (Gregory G. Woodbury) Followup-To: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Organization: Wolves Den UNIX BBS Lines: 34 GILLA@QUCDN.QueensU.CA (Arnold G. Gill) writes: >>the campus VMS machine has an editor called xedit. >[plus derision of xedit - well deserved, I might add] > > On the otherhand, VAX/VMS is an excellent >operating system, with a great many advantages over UNIX. It has a far >superior help system, and allows any unique shortening of commands/parameters >to operate properly. Its disadvantages include being wordy, and having a >lousy subdirectory structure. Unix is far better there. Also, the >redirection and pipelineing capabilities of Unix are great. A proper >operating system would amalgamate the two, taking the strengths of both. Strictly speaking, none of the advantages you cite (for VMS) are part of the Operating System part of UNIX. UNIX actually consists of the Operating System (kernel) and then the UNIX System "environment". The UNIX command languages (shells - Bourne Shell, C Shell, etc...) do have their problems, and many times the lack of a decent help system has led many people to re-invent a decent help system. (Pointers to decent UNIX help systems would be appreciated ;-) > Of course, I want to know why this discussion is wasting bandwidth on >comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d. So us "stoopid *nix freaks" can educate the poor, uneducated people who are stuck using that crippled, bastard, step-child of UNIX called dos, to the true power of "open system" computing. NOTE! NOTE! NOTE! lots of ;-) ;-) ;-) -- Gregory G. Woodbury Sysop/owner Wolves Den UNIX BBS, Durham NC UUCP: ...dukcds!wolves!ggw ...dukeac!wolves!ggw [use the maps!] Domain: ggw@cds.duke.edu ggw@ac.duke.edu ggw%wolves@ac.duke.edu Phone: +1 919 493 1998 (Home) +1 919 684 6126 (Work) [The line eater is a boojum snark! ]