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From: shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.misc,comp.unix.bsd.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: On the Naming of UNIX Things
Date: 20 Nov 1996 06:07:17 GMT
Organization: TRIUMF, Canada's National Meson Facility
Lines: 55
Message-ID: <56u76l$511@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca>
References: <55vhpf$q3o@mail1.wg.waii.com> <wzzq0kfrg0.fsf@expernet26.expernet.com> <56l8sj$6d2@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> <kbibb.848468050@shellx>
NNTP-Posting-Host: alph02.triumf.ca
Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.misc:26551 comp.unix.bsd.misc:1568 alt.folklore.computers:124937
In article <kbibb.848468050@shellx>, Ken Bibb <kbibb@best.com> wrote:
>In <56l8sj$6d2@nntp.ucs.ubc.ca> shoppa@alph02.triumf.ca (Tim Shoppa) writes:
>
>[deleted]
>>Note that the above utility programs can be called through Keyboard
>>monitor commands, which can be abbreviated to 1 or 2 characters
>>in many cases. The concept of a "keyboard monitor" with
>>abbreviable commands is completely foreign to Unix - but this
>>will hardly matter after January 17, 2038!
>
>Isn't analogous to the unix idea of a shell where you can abbreviate
>the commands?
Not exactly. I'm at fault for pointing at a misleading feature
for the RT-11 keyboard monitor when trying to differentiate
it from a typical Unix shell. The abbreviability of monitor
commands is part of it, but I'd better explain in detail:
1. The RT-11 Keyboard monitor can do certain low-level things
entirely within itself - things like defining logical names, depositing
numbers into memory locations, etc. - without invoking any utility
programs. These low-level things would be analogous to "built-in"
shell commands.
B. The keyboard monitor can also invoke system utilities
if you explicitly run ("R") them - these are things like "DIR", "DUP",
"PIP", etc. This would be analogous to typing "ls" to a Unix shell,
and having it execute "/bin/ls" for you. And just as in a Unix
shell, you have to give the exact name of the program you want to
run - abbreviation doesn't work for these types of commands which
explicitly invoke a specific executable.
III. But the RT-11 keyboard monitor has lots of commands which don't
directly map to a system utility name and aren't similar to
"shell built-in"s. An example would be the "COPY" command. If
you type "COPY" to move files between two devices, the keyboard
monitor invokes "PIP" for you. But if you type "COPY/BOOT", this
results in "DUP" (the Device Utility Program) being invoked. Nearly
every command that you could issue in class (B) can be issued by
a command in class (III).
It's keyboard monitor commands in classes (1) and (III) that can be
usefully abbreviated. The class of commands described in (B)
cannot be abbreviated to either a Unix shell or to the RT-11
keyboard monitor. (Yes, I know that interactively you can do
command completion. But that's not the same as abbreviation.)
What's fundamentally different between a Unix shell and the RT-11
Keyboard monitor is that a command to a Unix shell must be
either a built-in or explicitly name the executable to be run.
RT-11 (as well as VMS, RSX DCL, etc.) knows about commands that
result in system utilities being run, but doesn't require the
system utility to be explicitly named.
Tim. (shoppa@triumf.ca)