Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!lll-lcc!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!pixar!unicom!physh From: physh@unicom.UUCP (Jon 'Quality in - Quantity out' Foreman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Command interface interim suggestion Keywords: command interface, globbing, tomfoolery, kudgery Message-ID: <216@unicom.UUCP> Date: 10 Dec 87 03:40:53 GMT Reply-To: physh@unicom.UUCP Organization: Halcon Co. et al., via College of Marin in California. Lines: 24 As everyone knows, unix figures out how to run something by examining it magic number (or for shell scripts, its lack thereof.) I have often found a need for overriding a shells behavior of treating * and ? etc, as special in someway. For instance, I always wanted programs like "send" and "reply" from TOPS 20, so under UNIX I could say: "send bar I'll meet you for lunch?" and bar could "reply sure!" and not have it choke on the quote, question mark or exclaimation point. Since the binary images have so much extra information in them already (symbol table, reloadability when pure, etc), why not add yet another optional header, say 1024 bytes long, which defines how arguments are supposed to be handled? Then a command interpreter such as sh(1) or csh(1) or tcsh(1?) etc. can just open the file, read 1024 and have some method of resolving such sillyness. The kernel could recognize this header and just skip over it if it doesn't need anything from it. Even just a mechanism in the shell to do this on named programs would be nice (sorta like alias, say, unglob send; unglob reply.) -- {ucbvax,hoptoad}!\ ~~~~~~~\~~~ That's spelled {lll-lcc,hplabs}!well!unicom!physh Jon }() "physh" and {ptsfa,dual}!/ / pronounced "fish".