command line options

[Root Boy Jim]

   From: Rahul Dhesi <dhesi at bsu-cs.uucp>

   gwyn at brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ):
   > > ...if you plop naive users in front of
   > > a terminal running a raw Bourne shell or csh.  They were not
   > > intended to serve as naive-user interfaces.

   Delving into my old UNIX documentation, I find that naive users were
   expected to sometimes use ed as a user interface.  That's right, raw ed.

I don't see why you find `ed' so strange. Besides it's power, it is what
I call a `garden variety line editor'. While youngsters are used to
whiz-bang screen editors, those of us who grew up on REAL TTY's, know
these programs well. Typically, commands are one char, sometimes more,
and usually took one, perhaps two arguments. DEC had one called EDI, which
was pretty standard from RT-11 thru early VMS releases (is it still there?).
UNI{VAC,SYS} had @ed. Most toy systems had some kind of copy. Occasionally
the commands varied, but the same basic ideas were there.

   Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi

	(Root Boy) Jim Cottrell	<rbj at icst-cmr.arpa>
	National Bureau of Standards
	Flamer's Hotline: (301) 975-5688
	The opinions expressed are solely my own
	and do not reflect NBS policy or agreement
	Did I do an INCORRECT THING??