Re: [ros-kernel] Forward: "ReactOS is too limited"

[Joachim B. <jmb...@gm...>]

"Thomas J. Hruska" <shi...@sh...> writes:

> At 01:16 PM 5/30/2002 +0200, Joachim Breuer writeth:
>>Now I will pipe in here...
>
> Me too...
>
>>Jason Filby <jas...@ya...> writes:
>>
>>Linux *administrators* got used to powerful features of the command
>>line; my administrating of said winboxen would take at least twice as
>>long without cygwin available (copy all files meeting certain criteria
>>from here to there *keeping their relative pathnames* is something cmd
>>and the explorer are not really good at - ideas welcome).
>
> How about XCOPY?  It is a highly versatile copy command that I use
> regularly for backup purposes onto other drives/systems.

How do I feed my file list to xcopy? I'm not being facetious, I just
can't find it in the docs. How do I build the file list in the first
place, come to that... And then I'd probably have to fit it on the
command line, which has the (from my point of view) misfeature that
wildcard expansion is done within every single utility instead of the
shell.

foreach f ( `find . -name '*.foo' -cnewer 'whatever' | xargs grep -l 'string'` ); do
  g=/somewhere/else/$f:s!pattern!whatever!
  if [[ -f $g ]]; then
    echo Updating $g
  fi
  cp $f $g
done

>>Cygwin would *almost* be an solution if win's console werent utterly
>>broken (by design). Please do not try to argue with me on that, repeat
>>after me, win's console (as it is implemented today in 2k) is UNUSABLE
>>for a command line power user. (Selection behaviour, size change
>>restrictions are the major showstoppers). OK so maybe I can run the
>>cygwin shell in an XTerm with it all sitting on 55+ compatibility
>>layers, but the fact remains that the not-worked-around basic OS
>>concept in that area is broken.
>
> I've used Linux, DOS, Win3.x, Win95/98/Me/NT/2000 and have had no problems
> or difficulties with the command prompt under Windows.  Linux may have a
> powerful set of features, but I have never used more than 20% of them.
> That says that there are too many features for me.  My home environment is
> DOS and over the years I have written several hundred batch files to aid me
> in day-to-day chores.  I consider myself a "power user" and place heavy
> demands on the command line every single day (unless I'm busy writing a few
> thousand lines of code).

I use things like that for everyday work - and I really would miss the
"rope". This is not meant to be an offence, I'd just like to underline
that, even if it is only me who uses these features, I still miss them
where they're not available.

But scripting was not really my point, I'm used to a certain level of
command line editing (Ctrl-R foo [backward search to last command line
containing foo - it starts searching while you type, Ctrl-R again to
go to the next match, ...]) etc. pp. - These are just examples and I
really don't want to argue about it.

Let me try to put it this way: What I like about unix is not the
specific property that I have filename completion in ftp urls if I
choose so, but rather the concept that it is possible to add ftp
filename completion by calling ftp, feeding it commands and parsing
its output. Again I do not (only) like the specific feature of
programmable completion but rather that I can "plug together" unix
command line utilities arbitrarily using pipes and command line
insertion.

If other people do not require these features, fine be me - but why
should the fact that maybe 80% of the end users never touch them
deprive me of their long term availability? (Now I'm sounding personal
again... how do I put this diplomatically?)

To be very blunt: Sometimes people discussing reactos seem to say
"Let's not do this, it's featuritis". I fully agree with that basic
stance, but I would like to make a point that certain
concepts/features currently known from the unix environment cannot
easily be emulated, and so for me do not fall under "featuritis".

For those familiar with language theory: If you lack i.e. recursion
you cannot do certain things, no matter how hard you try.

>>BTW: If anyone feels like seriously thinking abouth some of these
>>'limitations' I could certainly flesh out a wishlist for 'doze from an
>>unix administrator's point of view.
>
> I know there are limitations, but I have only had to write programs on
> occasion to do what I want to do.  Particularly, pipes are extremely
> limited with base OS commands (hence I wrote a program called PIPE) and
> directory depth is limited (haven't bothered to write a program).  Really,
> most of the problems with the command line/batch files have to do with
> backwards campatibility issues to DOS v3.0 than anything else.  Microsoft's
> trying to make people move to VBScript (yuck) so they can get rid of the
> Console API, but we can thank large companies that demand command prompt
> functionality and so both still exist (which is good for the rest of us :)

Which is what I'd dream of: Looks like win to the user, feels like
unix to the administrator. Today windows just feels "foreign" to me,
no matter how much I do with it...

To hopefully do away with the misunderstanding: Of course unifying
today's diversity of OSs is an important goal, and being able to run
all that existing software people are already used to on an open
platform will be a brilliant state of affairs.

I just want to say that I will be completely exhilerated when I can
administrate a "windows" box by leveraging all of the experience I
have with unix/posix interfaces. - Gagh, sounds like pointy haired
talk again... hope you get my drift.

Allright, I'll be quiet about that for now.


So long,
   Joe

-- 
"I use emacs, which might be thought of as a thermonuclear
 word processor."
-- Neal Stephenson, "In the beginning... was the command line"