🚀 go-pugleaf

Path: castor.usc.edu!blarson
From: blarson@castor.usc.edu (Bob Larson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m68k.pc
Subject: Re: os-9
Message-ID: <2406@castor.usc.edu>
Date: 29 May 87 07:06:31 GMT
References: <PEPRBV.870528.182315.A0@CFAAMP.BITNET>
Reply-To: blarson@castor.usc.edu.UUCP (Bob Larson)
Distribution: world
Organization: USC AIS, Los Angeles
Lines: 35

In article <PEPRBV.870528.182315.A0@CFAAMP.BITNET> PEPRBV@CFAAMP.BITNET (Bob Babcock) writes:
>>> Continuing a discussion of the availability of software for OS-9
...
>>> Well, OS-9 has a comparison utility...
>
>Unless  it's been enhanced,  that's  another  sore point.  Take 2
>source  files which differ only by the addition  of a blank line,
>and cmp will spit out every byte past that point  as a difference
>because it only does a byte-by-byte comparison.

cmp is made for comparing binary files.  If you want to compare text
files, use a tool designed for the job.  I recomend the version of
diff I uploaded to compuserve (utilities section, downloaded by
75126,723) and just sent to the users group, but there is also a
program named tcmp available from the users group.  (Diff has two
problems: memory hungry and slow.  The output is very close to the
unix diff program, and can be fed to patch.) Is there enough demand
for it to make it worth posting?

My main problem with os9 is the bugs I find, but this doesn't differ
much from any other operating system/compiler that I have used.  (On
some systems the documented misfeatures exceed the pain of the bugs:
Who could put up with a system that has 16 bit addresses for some
instructions, 18 bit for others, and does bank swapping based on the
17th and 18th address bits to claim a 1 megabyte address range?  (for
those fortunate enough to not know the architectual bogosity, it's
known as the intel 80x86 family.)) At least at microware there is
someone there who listens to my complaints and tries to get the bugs
fixed for the next release.

-- 
Bob Larson
Arpa: Blarson@Usc-Ecl.Arpa
Uucp: (several backbone sites)!sdcrdcf!usc-oberon!castor.usc.edu!blarson
			seismo!cit-vax!usc-oberon!castor.usc.edu!blarson