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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: gripes
Subject: Re: ou command replaced by type
Message-ID: <5997@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 27-Sep-85 11:49:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.5997
Posted: Fri Sep 27 11:49:36 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Sep-85 11:49:36 EDT
References: <5996@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 18

> this is very annoying.  it's bad enough that when i want to know where
> something is i must ask what it is, but to make this feature a shell
> builtin so i can't have even my own version is just not right. 
> it makes no sense to ask WHAT when i want to know WHERE!!!!!!!!!

I agree that the choice of name is decidedly bad.  It wasn't our idea.
This poorly-named feature (which does a better job than ou(1) did, by
the way) came with the latest shell upgrade, which also included a number
of better-thought-out changes such as substantially better performance.
The package seemed worthwhile overall.

The reason type(1) is a builtin is partly because some of the information
it sometimes supplies is known only to the shell, and partly so that it
is guaranteed to exactly duplicate the shell's search algorithm (which
ou(1) botched in certain ways).
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry