Hi James
If the typing is truly such an issue you would simply create aliases for the
commands you regularly use- a simple thing to do really and the kind of
approach I've heard unix people advocate. Any number of AS/400 sites I have
encountered have "waj" for work active jobs (just an example).
Seriously, if you want to believe that having a cryptic, disjointed
illogical command lexicon is better simply because it saves you a few
keystrokes, be my guest.
If you really think that the majority of people using command lines are
experienced users get out and talk to some admins in the real world.
If you're trying to tell me you can remember unix commands and switches but
not OS/400 commands then you're just having a lend of me.
Bah !
Have a nice day and don't take my response seriously :)
Regards
Evan Harris
-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of James Rich
Sent: Thursday, 28 May 2009 7:13 a.m.
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: RE: qshell, ls, sort by size
On Wed, 27 May 2009, Evan Harris wrote:
Clunky old OS/400 with its pathetic verbose text interface would force
you to type something obvious like ORDERBY(*SIZE) as the parameter
determining sort key. Anyone can see the OS/400 approach is clearly
inferior - we all prefer cryptic terse statements to longer
self-documenting statements...
I think that the strength of the command prompting and verbosity in OS/400
is also its Achilles heel. Clearly in some situations having all that
verbosity is useful and very welcome. But equally in others I feel it is
a pain in the neck. I believe that in general commands on both systems
are used by rather experienced users. I've been using both for around 15
years. I have discovered that even after all this time there are very few
OS/400 commands that I can use without prompting and all of them take an
awful lot of typing. On the other hand, the terse unix shell commands
have all managed to stick in my memory and I quickly navigate and work on
the system without slowdowns. For me, the unix shell commands are far
easier to use because they are more efficient to type in! Some examples
of things I routinely do:
list all files/objects in my home directory/library:
shell: ls
OS/400: WRKOBJ OBJ(JAMES/*ALL)
Show running jobs/processes:
shell: ps ax
OS/400: WRKACTJOB
Delete files/programs/objects/etc. in my home directory/library:
shell: rm *~ *.o tmpfile?? (many ways to select files)
OS/400: DLTMOD MODULE(JAMES/MOD*), then DLTPGM PGM(JAMES/PGM*) (doesn't
have as useful regex for selecting what to delete and also requires a
different command for each object type)
So in these cases for me the verbosity is a detriment. Even these
examples I had to use prompting to determine what parameter DLTMOD takes:
MODULE or MOD. I think this is what many unix designers realized - that
the efficiency of a relatively terse command tends to outweigh the
obviousness of a verbose command when both are used by an experienced
user.
This is in contrast to a programming language. Because a program is a
static work (i.e. the code is useful for more than one execution), it is
more important to be descriptive than it is to be quick to type in. But
while you can make scripts from commands, the most common usage of a
command is to do something now and do it once (i.e. show me what files are
in my directory). I'm not saving the commands I type in for someone else
to run and understand, I'm just trying to clear out temporary files and
efficiency of entry trumps verbosity in this case. For this reason, let
your programming be verbose but let your commands be succinct!
James Rich
if you want to understand why that is, there are many good books on
the design of operating systems. please pass them along to redmond
when you're done reading them :)
- Paul Davis on ardour-dev
midrange.com
