RE: OT - Shutting down an RS/6000 ? -- MIDRANGE-L

Well, yeah - it's called apropos (don't ask why, I don't know)

apropos searches a set of database files containing short descriptions of
system commands for keywords and displays the result on the standard output.

I'm as much a 400/iSeries bigot as anyone, I think. And I also think that
400 developers are not the only people with intelligence (not to suggest
that anyone is saying that, but this religious discussion gets a little too
warm, sometimes - no one wins).

UNIX uses a lot of short, albeit cryptic, commands. So did System/36 -
maybe not so cryptic, but YMMV. A lot of 400 bigots on this list probably
used the 36 and loved its short, little typing, commands. A number of
veterans write things like "wa" for WRKACTJOB - it's faster by far, right?
Or "s" for "signoff endcnn(*yes)".

Unix was also developed by programmers, to a great extent. We tend to do
cute things all the time. So "ping" means "packet internet groper"
(really), as well as what sonar does underwater. But it's kinda funny, if
you're in the mood. There was not a corporate standard that made you use
3-letter short forms of words, with no (or few) vowels most of the time.
But I find it funny that IBM insisted (it had to) on VFYTCPCNN for PING -
I'm glad they used PING, too. Would ANY of you enter VFYTCPCNN on a 400
command line, given the choice?

Another example - GNU means "GNU's not Unix" - a recursive TLA
(three-letter-acronym), no less.

Someone asked about a number of commands - man, ls, etc. They do make some
sense, usually - man means manual, ls is probably list, cat could mean
catalog, although the connection with that in its current usage is probably
a little weak. awk is the first three letters of the last names of the guys
who wrote it (Aho, Kernighan, and Weinberger). Kernighan (and Ritchie,
IIRC) wrote the seminal book on C.

I don't know, see what you think of these remarks. Just rambling a little.

Cheers

Vern

At 09:47 AM 11/13/2002 -0800, you wrote:

>From: Hans Boldt [mailto:boldt@ca.ibm.com]
>Look Joe, I don't mean to criticize OS/400, but its command set can
>be just as confusing to a Posix programmer as the Posix command set
>can be to an OS/400 programmer.

True, does UNIX offer the menu "MAJOR" (or something similar)to find
commands with though?

An F4 from any command line brings you to this menu. Very handy for newbies
and dummies like myself.