The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Doug McIlroy <doug@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] V9 shell [was Re:  Warner's Early Unix Presentation]
Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2020 19:53:40 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200211035340.GA852@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202002110332.01B3WwWE015186@tahoe.cs.Dartmouth.EDU>

On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 10:32:58PM -0500, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> > What i like is the autocorrect feature in v8:
> >
> > $ cd /usr/blot
> > /usr/blit
> > $ pwd
> > /usr/blit
> 
> Here I am, editor of the v8 manual and unaware of the feature.
> We now know that silent correction is a terrible idea.

I had the same thought,

cd /some/place/I/want/to/remove
$PWD is /some/place/I/want/dont/remove
rm -rf ./*

oops.

> Postel's principle: "be conservative in what you do, be liberal
> in what you accept from others" was doctrine in early HTML
> specs, and led to disastrous disagreement among browsers'
> interpretation of web pages. Sadly, the "principle" lives on 
> despite its having been expunged from the HTML spec.

I think Jon had the right intentions.  HTML is different than
a command prompt.

> I didn't like some Lisp systems' DWIM (do what I mean) when I
> first heard about the feature, and I like it even less 40-some
> years on. I would probably have remonstrated with Rob had I
> realized the shell was doing it.

Yep, agreed.   There are places where that works and there are most
definitely places where they do not.  The shell should not guess.

  reply	other threads:[~2020-02-11  3:54 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 36+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-02-11  3:32 Doug McIlroy
2020-02-11  3:53 ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2020-02-11 11:24   ` Ralph Corderoy
2020-02-11 15:51     ` Larry McVoy
2020-02-11  4:46 ` Warren Toomey
2020-02-11  5:12   ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-11  6:33 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11  9:40 ` arnold
2020-02-11 15:06   ` Chet Ramey
2020-02-11 14:36 ` Clem Cole
2020-02-11 15:29   ` Mike Markowski
2020-02-11 16:03   ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-11 17:12     ` Clem Cole
2020-02-11 17:17     ` Steve Nickolas
2020-02-11 17:21 ` Dan Cross
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-02-07 22:25 [TUHS] Warner's Early Unix Presentation Warren Toomey
2020-02-07 23:57 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-08 15:15   ` Warner Losh
2020-02-08 21:50     ` Rob Pike
2020-02-10 15:05       ` Dan Cross
2020-02-10 15:46         ` [TUHS] V9 shell [was Re: Warner's Early Unix Presentation] arnold
2020-02-10 18:39           ` Rob Pike
2020-02-10 18:59             ` Bakul Shah
2020-02-10 19:58             ` Angelo Papenhoff
2020-02-10 20:11               ` Chet Ramey
2020-02-11  9:33             ` arnold
2020-02-11  9:47               ` Noel Hunt
2020-02-11  9:47               ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11  9:59                 ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11 17:05                   ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2020-02-11 17:18                     ` Arthur Krewat
2020-02-11 18:22                     ` Kurt H Maier
2020-02-16 21:34                       ` Wesley Parish
2020-02-11 18:26                     ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-11 23:56                       ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2020-02-12  0:12                         ` Jon Steinhart
2020-02-12  5:54                           ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11 17:36                   ` Dan Cross
2020-02-11 18:35                   ` Christopher Browne
2020-02-11 18:54                     ` Rob Pike
2020-02-11 21:36                     ` Harald Arnesen

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=20200211035340.GA852@mcvoy.com \
    --to=lm@mcvoy.com \
    --cc=doug@cs.dartmouth.edu \
    --cc=tuhs@tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).