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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <d5ee8428-e6e4-4013-bad1-6846c0ca0eee at o24g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>,
> 	AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
>> 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!
> 
> Sure, but it's probably more work than your likely to want to do.
> You do remember that Unix started with real teletypes when there
> was only one case.  I can even remember a time when if you accidently
> logged on with the caps lock on it set the terminal to map everything
> to single case. Of course, if you hade dual-case file names you were
> screwed.....
> 
>> Mimic MS-DOS? Why make things worse? MS-DOS?! Yuck.
> 
> This was around 1981.  MSDOS didn't have the bad reputation it has now.
> And everyone knew it.  It was an attempt to ease MSDOS users into Unix.
> Most of the users I knew who actually tried it ended out dumping it in
> favor of sh or csh pretty quick.  But, as a proof of concept it worked
> really well.
> 
>>> 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=92s 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.
> 
> That's ridiculous.  How many shells are there for Unix now?  How many
> did it start with? Why did so many people write new shells?  Why has
> no one ever written one that looked like VMS?
> 

Why should anyone write a VMS-like shell for Unix?  It's much easier to 
get the real thing.  One of Unix's major flaws is that anyone can write 
a shell and nearly everyone did!  sh, csh, tcsh, zsh, korn,. . . .

If they had gotten it right the FIRST time. . . .