Re: Ada.Command_Line and wildcards

[Markus E Leypold <development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de>]

Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au> writes:

>>>>>> "Markus" == Markus E Leypold <Markus> writes:
>
>     Markus> How does a GUI prevent the user to have 100000 files in a
>     Markus> directory ("folder")? And what happens if the user opens
>     Markus> such a directory?
>
> If I go to the computer of a typical GUI user, I find that their
> desktop is full of files. Usually this will be a mix of downloads
> (recent and old), applications (depending on OS), data files (some
> important, some out-of-date, and some rubbish).
>
> GUIs do nothing to ensure users use good organisational techniques for
> filing important data.

Well, I really meant 100000 files. One of the standard complaints in
this thread was, how, due to the restricted length of the unix command
line (more precisely: The maximum length of argv[] passed to a process
by the operating system kernel), ls *.adb fails sometimes and how bad
that is (and how it shows that wild card expansion in a shell is a bad
idea).

Well, my question was to Dmitry, who has been suggesting a GUI as a
better, more efficient way to interact with a computer (and than has
fallen conspiciously silent).

I'm not talking about garbage files lying around. I'm talking about
the following:

If we have many files in a GUI folder, the scroll bars become unusable
for scrolling and I wonder how long I'll take to mark all files in the
folder which are of pattern *~ to clean away garbage (in example). Is
this the better way to interact? Hardly. It's easier in the beginning,
yes, but much worse in the long run. Interestingly, the point "easier
to use in the beginning" or in interactive usage was, what the enemies
of the Unix command line here didn't want to concede back than. 

But I'm perhaps wrong to identify Georg's point of view with Dmitry's
and I'm not sure I really want to know more about Dmitry's very
own. I've been failing to grasp his avantgarde perspective on
everything to do with computing before. (I really respect his work,
i.e. contributions to GtkAda, but when the discussion shifts to theory
I realize that we come from different universes, probably even with
vastly different physical laws, <note:joke> and only meet here).

Nonetheless: A short answer, wether he thinks the Windows or Mac GUI
provide a solution to manage many files in one folder or to manipulate
all backup files beneath a certain folder, would be appreciated. If
not (if they don't provide) about which GUI has he been thinking (I
don't pretend Windows' and Mac's are the only two GUIs in the world).

Regards -- Markus