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From: howie@cunixc.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: globbing in the shell
Message-ID: <287@cunixc.columbia.edu>
Date: Thu, 3-Dec-87 21:10:24 EST
Article-I.D.: cunixc.287
Posted: Thu Dec  3 21:10:24 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 6-Dec-87 20:32:02 EST
References: <1257@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <6840002@hpcllmv.HP.COM>
Reply-To: howie@cunixc.columbia.edu (Howie Kaye)
Organization: Columbia University
Lines: 24

In article <889@russell.STANFORD.EDU> gandalf@russell.Stanford.edu (Juergen Wagner) writes:
>What you need may be something like the TOPS-20 style of interactive help
>facility. For many commands you can just hit the '?' key to get some hint
>on what is supposed to come next. This, however, requires some kind of 
>interface to the program to be invoked. Encountering a line
>	% foo -l frob
>followed by typing a special character (e.g. '?') your shell could fork
>	"foo -help -l frob"

We have developed a package which runs under BSD, sysV, and msdos,
which implements tops-20 like help and command completion.  I gave a
short work in progress talk on it at the summer Usenix.  See the
September ;login: for a description.

We have started writing various applications, the largest of which is
like the tops-20 MM (mail manager) program.  I think some work has
gone towards a shell also, though that hasn't progressed too far.
The shell would really need to be rewritten from scratch, and we don't
have the time.

------------------------------------------------------------
Howie Kaye				howie@columbia.edu
Columbia University 			hlkcu@cuvma.bitnet
Systems Group				...!rutgers!columbia!howie