[Info-vax] "Shanghai Stock Exchange" and OpenVMS

[AEF]

On Jan 28, 12:24 pm, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> In article <-r-dndyy7LwI6x3UnZ2dnUVZ_uedn... at giganews.com>,
>         "Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilber... at comcast.net> writes:
>
>
>
> > AEF wrote:
> >> On Jan 28, 1:46 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> >>> AEF schrieb:
>
[...]
> >                           There was only ONE case, uppercase!  I
> > believe it was automagically converted to lower case and you had to
> > "escape" anything you wanted left in uppercase.
>
> > There is no reason other than tradition to continue this barbarous
> > practice but tradition is a powerful force.
>
> And, as I have repeatedly stated here, if you don't like it, one of
> the strengths of Unix is you can change it.  I have used a system
> that had an "MSDOS shell" that mimiced MSDOS pretty well.  I have
> personally written a shell that mimiced the UCSD-Pascal menu system.

Can I change it to not be case-sensitive? If your rent check bounced
because it was in the wrong case, would that be okay? I think not!

Mimic MS-DOS? Why make things worse? MS-DOS?! Yuck.

>
> Adaptability is one of Unix's greatest strengths.  Which, brings up
> the question of why no one has done it?  Guess the people who actually
> use Unix like it the way it is.

Or it’s not in their power to change it. Or: Those who don't use Unix
use something else. So someone wasted time making Unix "adaptable" --
which you claim is one of Unix's greatest strengths -- only for it to
go unused. . . . OK.

> >> Well, I'd think the photographic terms, as they currently exist, are
> >> more intuitive, right?
>
> >> The file systems are another story. I haven't learned how you can have
> >> different disks in the same single file system. As a user I suppose
> >> that's fine, but in VMS the system manager can set up logical names to
> >> reference directories so that the user (or even the programmer in many
> >> cases) need not be concerned with what the underlying device is.
>
> > A unix user need not concern himself with the underlying storage media!
> > VMS users are accustomed to seeing physical devices, each with its own
> > filesystem.

A VMS user can be set up so that he not be concerned with device
names. And even without that, he can use the disk logical names
instead of physical device names.

> > In Unix, there is only ONE filesystem starting a "/" or the "root".  The
> > actual files may be on the one and only disk or on several different
> > disks.  Physical disks are mounted at "mount points" which look, to VMS
> > users, like directories.  The directories used as mount points are
> > normally empty since mounting a device on that mount point will overlay
> > any directory entries present.  The Unix user need not concern himself
> > with the details of which device(s) actually contain his files.

Thanks. I thought that's what mount points were, but never bothered to
look it up.

>
> >> Being intuitive is not the end-all be-all. What can you do with the OS
> >> is also important. Of course we _were_ discussing looking stuff up,
> >> but you referred to "progress", which opens up a whole new can of
> >> worms.
>
> >> Some things in Unix I find very cool, like using output of one program
> >> as input for another.
>
> > VMS can do that too!  Old line VMS people tend not to use it much but
> > it's there.  See HELP PIPE.
>
> A late addition, though.  Wonder where they got the idea?  (and the name!)

I don't have PIPE on my VMS systems. Yes, I always found that fact
that VMS doesn't provide and option for inputtable output (as Joe
Meadows' FILE program does) regrettable. But I wrote my own FILTER
command procedure to use as a PIPE-grep combination, so I at least
have that.

> >> But VMS has some very cool things, too.
>
> > Indeed it does.  Starting with using English words like COPY, PRINT,
> > DELETE, CREATE. . .  etc, as commands.
>
> Which is only a good thing in an Anglo-centric world.  :-)

Careful: This means that Unix commands are not good in any world.

> >                                         It requires a little more typing
> >   but that is not a hardship for anyone who has learned to type and is
> > not using a Model 33 teletype.
>
> And there is no reason why Unix can't do the same.  Well, except maybe
> for the fact that Unix users don't want to.  :-)
>
>
>
> > It makes the commands easy to remember.
>
> I have never had a problem remembering Unix commands.  And I used to go to
> larger conferences than DECUS that were full of people who had not problem
> remembering them.

How about a post-trimming command. All of us could use that!

I initially had trouble with "rm". I think of it as "remove" and want
to type "rem". Yeah, that's an "I'm used to VMS"-type thing.

[...]
>
> bill
>
> --
> Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
> billg... at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
> University of Scranton   |
> Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>

AEF