Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!psuvax1!gondor.psu.edu!schwartz From: schwartz@gondor.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Command interfaces Message-ID: <3161@psuvax1.psu.edu> Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 16:22:36 EST Article-I.D.: psuvax1.3161 Posted: Fri Dec 4 16:22:36 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 9-Dec-87 06:04:17 EST References: <1257@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <6840002@hpcllmv.HP.COM> <9555@mimsy.UUCP> <798@rocky.STANFORD.EDU> <432@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> Sender: netnews@psuvax1.psu.edu Reply-To: schwartz@gondor.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) Organization: Penn State University, University Park, PA Lines: 55 In article <432@cresswell.quintus.UUCP> ok@quintus.UUCP (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: > PR1MOS: > I've not only used PR1MOS, I have access to some of the manuals. > The last time I used it seriously was Rev 14, back when they > were just starting to switch over to UNIX- (or AEGIS-) like > options. A release or two before that, you passed options to > the Fortran compiler by writing octal numbers in the command > line (this set the P300's A and B registers to the numbers you > wrote; on PR1ME 400s and 500s the compilers still ran in > 32R = PR1ME 300 mode). I am **NOT** kidding, folks, you had > to be able to add octal to use the FTN compiler. This is still supported, by the way. > If SEG understands wildcards this is the first I've heard of it. I last used primos at rev 20. SEG didn't know about wildcards then either, but there is a new utility called "BIND" that makes (new) EPF style runfiles. (These work like primos "internal" commands.) BIND takes command line options, unlike SED. Part of the magic of BIND is it allows you to specify what command line objects (i.e. wildcards) are expanded by the command processor when the BINDee is invoked. One catch when talking about primos wildcards is that they are treated in a fundamentaly different way than unix wildcards. The command line "cc @.c" with files a.c b.c is equivalent to cc a.c cc b.c rather than "cc a.c b.c". That is, the command processor iterates over wildcards rather than expanding them. To get unix style behavior, you have to use the Multics-ism "cc [wild @.c]" or use BIND to tell the command processor not to expand wildcards for cc. Primos supplies library routines to search directoies using wildcards. Note that is would be easy to add this kind of functionality to unix... just add more bits to the inode structure, st_dowild say. Then have the shell look at them before expanding wildcards. It will never catch on, though :-) For the record, after several years of using primos, it is clear to me that the unix scheme is sufficiently clearer and simpler so as to outweigh many of the arguments against having the shell to globbing. Nothing is perfect, but in general unix does it better. In terms of "rm *". Assuming it is that important a case to take care of, why not have the shell recognise and fork "rm" after checking arguments. Certainly "login" in the shell is precident enough. And the old executable can stay in /bin for those in the know to use when the need arises. -- Scott Schwartz schwartz@gondor.psu.edu