From: crossd at gmail.com (Dan Cross)
Subject: [COFF] Other OSes?
Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2018 20:05:29 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAEoi9W7TjytZEnEBZWRJdudRp1LS1nA462d=ohWenYAOJK6s=Q@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <B52001B7-82DC-4D33-B1AF-02482A6C04A4@bitblocks.com>
On Sun, Jul 8, 2018 at 7:28 PM Bakul Shah <bakul at bitblocks.com> wrote:
> [...]
> I believe autocompletion has been available for 20+ years. IIRC, I
> switched to zsh in 1995 and it has had autocompletion then. But you
> do have to teach zsh/bash how to autocomplete for a given program.
>
csh has had filename auto-completion since the late 70s or early 80s,
though nowhere as rich or as full-featured as bash/zsh, let alone TOPS-20.
[...]
>
> This sort of magic incantation is needed because no one has bothered
> to create a simple library for autocompletion & no standard convention
> has sprung up that a program can use. It is not entirely trivial but
> not difficult either.
This. Much of the issue with Unix was convention, or rather, lack of a
consistent convention. Proponents of DEC operating systems that I've known
decry that Unix can't do stuff like, `RENAME *.FTN *.FOR`, because the
shell does wildcard expansion. Unix people I know will retort that that
behavior depends on programming against specific libraries. I think the big
difference is that the DEC systems really encouraged using those libraries
and made their use idiomatic and trivial; it was such a common convention
that NOT doing it that way was extraordinary. On the other hand, Unix never
mandated any specific way to do these things; as a result, everyone their
own thing. How many times have you looked at a Unix utility of, er, a
certain age, and seen `main()` start something like:
main(argc, argv)
int argc;
char *argv[];
{
if (--argc > 0 && *argv[1] == '-') {
argv++;
while (*++*argv)
switch (**argv) {
case 'a':
/* etc.... */
continue;
}
}
/* And so on.... */
I mean, goodness: we didn't even use getopt(3)! It was all hand-rolled! And
thus inconsistent.
Cisco's CLI is a great model for this. It would
> even prompt you with a help string for non-keyword args such as ip
> address or host! With Ciscso CLI ^D to list choices, ^I to try auto
> complete and ? to provide context sensitive help. It was even better
> in that you can get away with just typing a unique prefix. No need to
> hit <tab>. Very handy for interactive use.
This is unsurprising as the Cisco CLI is very clearly modeled after
TOPS-20/TENEX which did all of those things (much of which was in the CMND
JSYS after work transferred to DEC and TENEX became TOPS-20). It's
definitely one of the cooler features of twenex.
- Dan C.
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next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-07-09 0:05 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 61+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-07-05 5:56 wkt
2018-07-05 6:29 ` spedraja
2018-07-05 6:40 ` bakul
2018-07-05 15:23 ` clemc
2018-07-05 20:49 ` scj
2018-07-05 21:25 ` david
2018-07-06 15:42 ` gtaylor
2018-07-05 22:38 ` ralph
2018-07-05 23:11 ` bakul
2018-07-06 0:06 ` lm
2018-07-06 15:49 ` gtaylor
2018-07-06 0:52 ` tytso
2018-07-06 5:59 ` ralph
2018-07-06 15:59 ` gtaylor
2018-07-06 16:10 ` ralph
2018-07-06 16:47 ` gtaylor
2018-07-06 15:57 ` gtaylor
2018-07-06 15:38 ` gtaylor
2018-07-09 1:56 ` tytso
2018-07-09 3:25 ` gtaylor
2018-07-09 3:35 ` crossd
2018-07-09 3:43 ` gtaylor
2018-07-09 3:52 ` imp
2018-07-09 11:32 ` perry
2018-07-09 11:50 ` perry
2018-07-09 11:34 ` crossd
2018-07-09 5:23 ` tytso
2018-07-09 12:52 ` clemc
2018-07-09 13:06 ` [COFF] PiDP Obsolesces Guaranteed clemc
2018-07-09 14:39 ` [COFF] Other OSes? tytso
2018-07-09 14:46 ` clemc
2018-07-09 11:24 ` perry
2018-07-05 22:51 ` ewayte
2018-07-08 20:31 ` perry
2018-07-08 20:53 ` perry
2018-07-09 2:44 ` crossd
2018-07-10 5:30 ` bakul
2018-07-16 14:49 ` crossd
2018-07-16 16:59 ` [COFF] Capabilities (was " bakul
2018-07-06 0:55 ` [COFF] " crossd
2018-07-06 5:42 ` bakul
2018-07-09 2:51 ` crossd
2018-07-10 5:41 ` bakul
2018-07-06 4:04 ` grog
2018-07-06 16:10 ` gtaylor
2018-07-06 18:27 ` [COFF] Editor Scripts scj
2018-07-06 19:04 ` gtaylor
2018-07-08 20:50 ` [COFF] Other OSes? perry
2018-07-08 23:27 ` bakul
2018-07-09 0:00 ` grog
2018-07-09 0:13 ` perry
2018-07-09 0:05 ` crossd [this message]
2018-07-09 0:56 ` lm
2018-07-09 2:23 ` crossd
2018-07-09 0:11 ` perry
2018-07-09 0:19 ` crossd
2018-07-09 2:00 ` bakul
2018-07-09 3:02 ` [COFF] Origination of awful security design [COFF, COFF] bill
2018-07-09 13:10 ` [COFF] Other OSes? david
2018-07-09 13:17 ` perry
2018-07-09 13:13 ` perry
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