From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from localhost by hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca with SMTP id <45459>; Tue, 23 Oct 2001 22:34:16 -0500 To: rc Subject: Re: Beta release rc-1.6b3 available In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 23 Oct 2001 16:32:53 CDT." <20011023223253.B17282@texne.com> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 22:34:14 -0500 From: Chris Siebenmann Message-Id: <01Oct23.223416edt.45459@hawkwind.utcs.utoronto.ca> | On the other hand, one of the nice things abot rc is that it has a | small memory footprint, and adding features would make it worse in | that respect. Tilde expansion is particularly bad in that respect because it drags in a large collection of code from the C library. In extreme cases, it may not be possible to statically link something that uses getpwnam() because the mechanisms for flexible username lookups require runtime loaded dynamic libraries. If you do tilde expansion through the filesystem (for example, via a /u directory full of symlinks from usernames to their real home directory) you can gain the benefit of GNU readline auto-completion as well as significant universality at the price of only a little extra typing. - cks