Re: Ada.Command_Line and wildcards

[rdeininger@mindspringdot.com (Robert Deininger)]

In article <11wk29zr0.fsf@hod.lan.m-e-leypold.de>, Markus E Leypold
<development-2006-8ecbb5cc8aREMOVETHIS@ANDTHATm-e-leypold.de> wrote:

...

>As far as the shell syntax is concerned:  
>
...
>
>  - I do think the VMS shell has the same problem with the difference between 
>
>      foo yadda*.* 
>   
>    and
>  
>      foo yadda *.*

Out of curiosity, what is the problem here in VMS?

The first example passes 1 parameter (yadda*.*) to the command foo.  If
the number of required parameters for foo is <= 1, it will run. 
Otherwise, the shell will prompt for more parameters.

The second example passes 2 parameters (yadda and *.*) to command foo.  If
foo is defined with only 1 parameter, the shell will report a "too many
parameters" error instead of invoking foo.

If this behavior isn't reasonable, what behavior would be? 
Auto-correcting of typos, with a mind-reading option?

$ SET PROCESS/PARSE_STYLE=READ_MIND

Of course, the default would have to be /PARSE_STYLE=NOREAD_MIND to
maintain upward compatibility.  :-)

...

>>> Most (auto-) configuration concepts are really bad hacks. They are
>>> hardly Unix design choices. The wrong place to fix that is to change
>>> the shell or the prcess model.
>
>> Right. But don't you think that this kind of use of Unix tools
>> must be investigated such that the Unix design choices are taken
>> into account while doing so? 
>
>Yes, but the brokenness of the auto configuration philosophy has
>nothing to do with Unix design choices. It is actually a problem VMS
>wouldn't have, since it doesn't exist in different sizes on vastly
>different platforms. 

VMS certainly does exist in different sizes on different platforms.  But
the OS does a good job of hiding most of the underlying platform from
applications, so they don't need to care.

Auto-configuration style hacks are rarely used in native VMS
applications.  Usually, the information the hack is trying to figure out
can be obtained more directly.

Importing autoconfiguration hacks to VMS can be a nightmare.