From: tfb@tfeb.org (Tim Bradshaw)
Subject: [TUHS] 'Command subcommand ...' history
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2017 15:42:02 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <29D69C88-7B0A-40F9-AF4D-68705E8FC514@tfeb.org> (raw)
Lots of tools now seem to use this strategy: there's some kind of wrapper which has its own set of commands (which in turn might have further subcommands). So for instance
git remote add ...
is a two layer thing.
Without getting into an argument about whether that's a reasonable or ideologically-correct approach, I was wondering what the early examples of this kind of wrapper-command approach were. I think the first time I noticed it was CVS, which made you say `cvs co ...` where RCS & SCCS had a bunch of individual commands (actually: did SCCS?). But I think it's possible to argue that ifconfig was an earlier example of the same thing. I was thinking about dd as well, but I don't think that's the same: they're really options not commands I think.
Relatedly, does this style originate on some other OS?
--tim
(I realise that in the case of many of these things, particularly git, the wrapper is just dispatching to other tools that do the werk: it's the command style I'm interested in not how it's implemented.)
next reply other threads:[~2017-03-24 15:42 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2017-03-24 15:42 Tim Bradshaw [this message]
2017-03-24 15:44 ` Larry McVoy
2017-03-28 1:08 ` Clem Cole
2017-03-24 21:46 ` Arthur Krewat
2017-03-24 21:55 ` Paul Winalski
2017-03-28 19:55 Doug McIlroy
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