Re: Interpretation of extensions different from Unix/Linux?

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>]

Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> writes:

> Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com> writes:
> [...]
>> (Why is the "search" command called "grep"?  For that matter, why is the
>> "help" command called "man"?)
> [...]
>
> Why not?

Because it's stupid.  ;-)

Yeah, I know all the history mentioned below.
And I'm used to it.  I still think it's stupid.

Please explain to my Grandmother why it's "grep" and "man".

> The original Unix text editor (or at least one of the earliest ones)
> was "ed", a line-oriented editor.  In ed, the way to print all the
> lines in the current buffer (file) matching a specified pattern is
>
> g/RE/p
>
> where "RE" is a regular expression.  Somebody has the bright idea of
> extracting this functionality into a separate program.
>
> "man" is short for "manual".

I know.

And the Linux 'man' pages tell you to use 'info' if you want
the real story.  ;-)

> Unix is flexible enough that you can change all this if you like.

Yeah, please explain to my Grandmother how to "change all this"
if she likes.

> The shell is just another program.

Yeah, that's an elegant feature of Unix.  But now we have dozens of
shells, and each one stinks more than all the others put together.

>...It would be easy enough to
> create a new shell, or even a set of aliases for an existing shell,
> that remaps all the command names to something more "sensible", so
> "man" is called "help" and "grep" is called "search".
>
> I find it interesting that nobody bothers to do this.  Once you
> get used to the odd names, they're really not a problem.

I'm used to the odd names.  They're not a problem for me,
except when I get in a ranting mood.

But I do alias 'ls' to show all the sort-of hidden files.
Hiding files that start with "." is just plain stupid.

> You also mentioned that the arguments grep are "backwards".
> It's true that the argument order is imposed by wildcard expansion,
> but what's backwards about putting the search terms first and
> file name(s) last?  I think it's just a matter of what you're
> accustomed to.

I'm accustomed to grep, and I use it every day, but I still think
"search so-and-so files for such-and-such string" is more intuitive
(to me) than the other way 'round.  Matter of taste, I suppose.

> The Ada-relevant point, I suppose, is that Unix behavior is just
> as valid as, say, VMS behavior -- or at least Ada needs to treat it
> that way.  If Ada is going to provide functionality for things that
> differ from one OS to another, it needs to accomodate different
> systems, even the subset that I think is stupid, as well as the
> differing subset that you think is stupid.

Yes, indeed.

I don't like the attitude that says, "Ada should provide nothing at all,
because different systems are different."  I once worked on a system
where all directories were numbers (1 to 100), and there were no
subdirectories.  That doesn't mean Ada can't provide decent support
for hierarchical directories.

- Bob

P.S. Note that when I gripe about Unix/Linux, I'm griping against some
imaginary ideal.  The truth is, I'm happier in Linux than Windows or
MS-DOS or VMS or ...