Re: I have a question...

[ncohen@watson.ibm.com (Norman H. Cohen)]

In article <EMERY.94Oct14141610@goldfinger.mitre.org>,
emery@goldfinger.mitre.org (David Emery) writes: 

|> >I should say that if a UNIX program needs to ask the user for a file
|> >name, something must be wrong with its design.
|>
|> Some Unix programs are filters.  They read standard input, and write
|> to standard output.  This is a SMALL SUBSET of Unix programs.
|> Compilers, for instance, may well ask for a filename if the user
|> provides no filename on the command line.  Thus this assertion (that a
|> Unix program that has to ask for a filename is 'bad') is not valid.

Indeed.  For example, a text editor may support commands to insert a
given file in the current editing buffer, write all or part of the
current editing buffer to a file, or open a new buffer and read some file
into it.  It is a real pain if the user can't use symbols like ~ in such
commands, so the editor ought to expand the file names in such commands.

--
Norman H. Cohen    ncohen@watson.ibm.com