unix utility peeves

[utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!floyd!trb]

here are two of my pet unix utility peeves:

peeve #1

In vanilla ed: (besides the fact that it should be put to pasture)...

When I used to use ed, I sometimes had to program in one of those
fine languages whose compiler only accepted UPPER CASE.

So, naturally, I would turn on CAPS LOCK.
So there I would go, merrilly inputting...

a
[caps lock]
LALALA, I'M HAVING A GOOD TIME HACKING...
...
[1/2 hour later, without a care in the world...]
...
END
. [junk so that postnews will not terminate my message here, dammit!]
W
? [echoed by ed]
Q
$ [echoed by sh, ARRGH!]

If you see the person who put capital Q into ed as the forced
quit, tell her I love her.

peeve #2

cd is easy to mistype as dc.  I do it all the time.  For you rogue fans
out there, typing "dc /usr/include" is like running into a floating
eye.  It doesn't hurt all that much, but you have to goof around a
little to fix yourself up.  dc doesn't exit when you hit del, so you
watch as it prints out results of its trying to interpret the directory
as a dc script [ha].  I fixed the dc on my system to check to see if
your dc script is a directory, and to exit with a message when it
does.  (Having it do a cd would have been misbegotten and practically
impossible besides.)

	Andy Tannenbaum   Bell Labs  Whippany, NJ   (201) 386-6491