Re: Who knew you could do that with DSPF?

On Wed, May 3, 2017 at 9:49 PM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This brings up the same interface as using option '2' against a directory
from WRKLNK. Normally I find that a slightly more natural way to get there
rather than DSPF.

I would emphasize the "slightly". I guess if you think EDTF is more
"natural" than DSPF, then option 2 from WRKLNK makes some sense. But
it is definitely not intuitive to me that either one can even be used
on a directory. Ask a Unix person if it would ever occur to them to
invoke vi on a directory. Or the 'more' command on a directory. (Or
perhaps it's the fact that using option 2 allows you to pretend that
it's NOT the EDTF command, and THAT makes option 2 more natural?)

For that matter, WRKLNK is already not that intuitive to me. Back when
I was teaching myself DOS, the term "link" in a file system context
never came up. Even when I was being taught Unix at university, we
rarely talked about links, and when we did, it was virtually always
regarding symbolic links, not hard links. So I would never have
guessed WRKLNK in a million years. (Huh? You want me to work with
shortcuts? What? And now that I'm on this screen, it doesn't even show
the symlinks?) But I got used to it eventually through repetitive use.
Now I wish someone had told me I can use EDTF or DSPF from the
beginning, so that by now, I would be used to it.

John Y.