From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: by archone.tamu.edu id <22543>; Mon, 1 Jul 1991 14:05:00 -0500 From: Byron Rakitzis To: rc Subject: f.c. Message-Id: <91Jul1.140500cdt.22543@archone.tamu.edu> Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1991 14:04:57 -0500 On the topic of username completion and other feeping creaturism, I wanted to offer the following thoughts: 1) I don't want to add a new feature to rc unless someone cannot do what they need to do without it. Putting the $^ hack in, for example, was a big decision for me, and what persuaded me was the fact that it was not otherwise possible to get $^ output without mucking around with $ifs in a really ugly way. 2) Saying that your system administrator is too stupid or won't apply the change, or that the filesystem should not be polluted with soft links is not a conclusive argument as far as I am concerned. I honestly think that /u is the correct way to solve the home directory problem, because it is most definitely the most portable solution, which works across ALL unix tools and ALL unix systems. I don't see why I need to break rc in order to satisfy uncooperative sysadmins. 3) The readline brouhaha is a different kettle of fish as far as I am concerned: I added readline support because it was so easy to do so, and because there are so many people out there "addicted" to filename completion and command-line editing who would not otherwise consider using rc. The number of requests for readline support that I have received has been staggering! The number of requests for username completion can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Therefore, I saw it as a necessary evil for rc to gain acceptance. (And in any case, readline does not affect the language which rc accepts, so it was easier to swallow the readline pill) As I said in a previous note, I am hoping that people will instead use a mux-like xterm in order to get command-line editing. But it is a little disingenuous of me to advocate the use of such a program when no such program yet exists! Hence, readline.