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From: hoey@nrl-aic.ARPA (Dan Hoey)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: unix file system
Message-ID: <762@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 16-Aug-85 11:50:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.762
Posted: Fri Aug 16 11:50:29 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 21:33:04 EDT
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>From: cudcv@daisy.warwick.UUCP (Rob McMahon)
>Date: 7 Aug 85 10:25:12 GMT

>>> basic problem with the  UNIX file  system  for FORTRAN.
>>
>>You must also rewrite "cat," because I can copy a file by saying cat a >b .
>
>It's worse than that - the shell creates `b', and it's got no idea what
>sort of file to create,

It's even worse than that.  ``cat'' can take more than one argument,
hence its name.  What do *you* want to happen when you concatenate
files with different record sizes, character sets, etc.

>maybe the shell should be changed to include a syntax
>like `>[ASCII,RECORDSIZE=80,ANSICC]b' !

Ulch!  Maybe we should begin each command with "//" and use space
for a comment character.

Dan