From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:20:43 -0500 From: "Dan Cross" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] How can I shift a variable other than ? In-Reply-To: <20070310215344.GH12719@kris.home> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <00a0d91965e54a4bfb03ea9070ed2e8b@coraid.com> <20070310173030.GG12719@kris.home> <20070310215344.GH12719@kris.home> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1f527c3c-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On 3/10/07, Kris Maglione wrote: > On Sat, Mar 10, 2007 at 04:20:22PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: > >Nonsense. You think rc has never changed before? There have been > >plenty of non-backwards compatible changes in Plan 9. > > You miss the point entirely. I agree that things shouldn't stay the same > simply for the sake of compatibility. Plan 9 threw away a bunch of UNIX > crud in the begining, and was not set in stone from the begining. I have > no desire to add teletypes and ioctls to be compatible with UNIX. > > The point is that rc(1) has been rc since the begining. It's rc > everywhere. If you write an rc script, you can expect it work wherever > you send it. The one infuriating exception which I've run across is the > UNIX port, which I have to worry about being in peoples' PATHs on UNIX, > rather than the Plan 9 version. > > If there are to be changes, there's no reason to make those > changes to rc. It would be best to create a new shell that deals with > the shortcomings of rc, rather than adding features and cruft. That is > how UNIX got to be so cruddy to begin with. The reason that sh(1) and > Plan 9 are so nice is because they reevaluated and threw away most of > what came before them. No, I didn't miss the point, which, if carried to its logical conclusion would imply that we should just write a new operating system whenever we want to add something new. There's nothing set in stone about any system; the problems you describe come when people start believing that there is. The proliferation of shells under Unix could have been avoided by carefully re-evaluating the existing offers and making appropriate changes. Instead, we ended up with Shell Soup. Rc is just a program; yes, a pretty good one, but it is not a religious document: it is open to interpretation, re-evaluation and change. Put another way, one of the reasons Plan 9 has remained so nice over the years is because the folks primary responsible for it have been open to making reasonable changes where appropriate. > >>It runs on Inferno, which runs on Plan 9. You can script for Plan 9 in > >>Inferno's sh. You can even script for UNIX in it. I've done both. It > >>works. It's not even ugly. > > Then perhaps, as has been said for ages, it is best to make the > integration between Inferno and Plan 9 more seemless, and the > installation easier. It would, indeed, be nice to include Inferno in > Plan 9 by default. You're replying to yourself there. - Dan C.