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From: blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc,comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Command interfaces
Message-ID: <5624@oberon.USC.EDU>
Date: 10 Dec 87 00:42:09 GMT
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In article <3167@psuvax1.psu.edu> schwartz@gondor.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) writes:
>In article <5565@oberon.USC.EDU> blarson@skat.usc.edu (Bob Larson) writes:
>>In article <3161@psuvax1.psu.edu> schwartz@gondor.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) writes:
>Agreed, to some extent.  But the dark underside of the primos command
>processor is that you can't ever have more functionality than it gives
>you at the moment.
Not true, since it allows access to functions that may be user written, and
is a programming language in itself.

[example in answer to my question ommited.  The shortest one I received via
mail.  (It took advantage of a feature of diff that the others didn't.)

>By the way, how does primos handle something like
>	ls  [!B]*.[!c]
>i.e. multiple internal negation.

Primos does not dirrectly support double negation, however it also has
CPL (equivelent to shell scripts):

&do i &list [wild ^@@.c]
  &if [substr %i% 1 1] ^= B &then type %i%
&end

Substite dir for type if you want to add options.  
If anyone cares to notice this doesn't handle large directories, I
would note that unix lacks (to my knolage) any reasonable way to
handle large wildcard expantion, and that fixing the above cpl take 1
more line.

I don't plan on continuing the command processor debate, like editors,
it is mainly a matter of personal preference.  I think primos handles
the common case of name generation nicely (without any ambiguities
such as those mentioned about an unspecified os in a different
message), but lacks direct support for multiple negation.  (A rare
case for me.)  (Where the primos command processor realy looses is in
lack of general-purpouse redirection, pipes, and easy handling of
multi-tasking.)
--
Bob Larson	Arpa: Blarson@Ecla.Usc.Edu	blarson@skat.usc.edu
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