Re: PATCH: 3.1.5: module for builtin FTP client

[Bruce Stephens <b.stephens@isode.com>]

Peter Stephenson <pws@ibmth.df.unipi.it> writes:

> I'll try and get a patched version ready this afternoon MET (this
> time I'll modify the version number, unless anyone thinks I
> shouldn't).

I don't see why not.  Alternatively, you could introduce some other
qualifier.  Tix also has a patchlevel, for example.  Linux kernels can
have names like 2.0.36pre4 and things, although the kernel itself
looks like 2.0.36 to applications which ask (i.e., the pre4 is just in
the filename).

I think this zftp module looks very interesting.  There was talk of a
perl module, too---has anything come of that?  What other modules make
sense in a shell?  

One that springs to mind is a minimal relational database: something
like rdb, but perhaps a little more general.  (rdb is restricted to
tab-separated fields, I think.)  

It's very convenient to have a relational database for little tasks,
and very nice to use ordinary files as the databases (since one can
use pipes and filters and things), but rdb uses little Perl scripts
for its operations, which is arguably a significant overhead (although
I suspect this isn't critical).  

AT&T's cql <URL:http://www.research.att.com/~ciao/doc/cql.ps.gz> might
be a good model to start from; I'm not sure that it's really a
relational database, as such, but it provides ways of dealing with
passwd files and can produce indexes to speed operations.  Having
something equivalently powerful as a module for zsh would be cool.