🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <13000@well.UUCP> gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart) wrote:
>I received an e-mail message from an IBMer asking me to mention a couple
>of examples of AIX's peculiar commands --
>those that deviate from Sys V by having non-standard names, or by having
>(horror of horrors!) multi-character options!
>
>Two examples off the top of my head --
>
>'print'   (whatever happened to 'pr'?)

	`pr' is there.  I use it all the time.

>	has several multi-char options,
>	including 'dd' (drop dead) and 'ca' (for 'cancel')

I don't much care for these, either.

>'tctl'	takes options 'rewind' 'retension' 'reset' etc....

These are quite similar to the options to the BSD `mt' command, which
performs the same functions.  This usage reflects prior art.

>Trust me when I say that these aren't the only ones!

Why should we?  If we're going to put up with this ill-tempered babble,
you might at least follow through and substantiate your criticism.

>Such "improvements" we can all live without!!

Neither of these are the gratuitous re-namings of existing SysV
utilities you seemed to be complaining about in the original note.
The `print' command is not in the SVID.  On BSD systems, it's a trivial
shell script that calls `pr', then `lpr'.

Earlier versions of AIX came with the FTP utility named `xftp' and
the TELNET utility named `tn'.  The BSD `rsh' utility was called `remsh',
to avoid conflict with the SysV restricted shell (`rsh').  As of
2.2.1, all three have the BSD names, and the restricted shell is
called `Rsh'.

>It's still not "user-friendly"!
>Assume, for a change, that even naive users have a modicum
>of intelligence, and can figger out command options (or run 'man') --
>but what happens when the new user writes a nifty shell program, moves
>it to the /usr/local/bin directory, and finds that when he/she types
>the command, he/she gets a "file not found" message -- still gotta do a
>rehash! 

You're taking IBM to task for not re-writing the C shell?  What should
they call it, after they fix everything you don't like?  They provided
two alternate user interfaces with AIX (neither of which I use when I
can avoid them) that are, arguably, more user-friendly than the C shell.

>Michael Sierchio

>"The opinions expressed herein aren't necessarily"

I quite agree.

	Chuck Karish		{decwrl,hpda}!mindcrf!karish
	(415) 493-9000		karish@forel.stanford.edu