Re: [tlug] Arcane command-line (Was: epcEditor)

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Matt" == Matt Doughty <mdoughty@example.com> writes:

    Matt> I think that the power of the command line is in its
    Matt> berevity,

You must just pine for TECO, then.

    Matt> and much like programming languages if you make it more
    Matt> readable/verbose you negatively affect their power (see:
    Matt> cobol).

Interesting argument.  But I tend to disagree.  I like the GNU long
options, because often I can just guess what the right options are.
Eg, the other day I was mucking with ipchains for the first time in a
while, and I wanted to shut out the guy hammering on port 8473.  (It
was generating a lot of log entries.)  Without reading the manual, I
hit on

            ipchains -A input --destination-port 8473 DENY

Of course I then got a syntax error and had to read the manual anyway,
but that's not bad for just guessing, is it?

I think the real power of the command line is that it is _not_ "much
like" a programming language, it _is_ a programming language.  For
example, Steve Baur wrote a BASIC interpreter in ksh once.  The point
is that it has a rich, expressive syntax.

The weakness of GUI, as I realized well after writing my previous
screed, is that current GUI tools provide no syntax beyond "collection
of items in a box."  With the single exception of the spreadsheet,
there is no common GUI with an _input_ syntax beyond "collection".
Sure, even Athena provides a tree widget, but it doesn't allow you to
rewrite that tree.  Glade just allows you to collect a bunch of
widgets.  Etc.

Of course there's some CAD and CASE available, but not for the kinds
of purposes that we use shells for.

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