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

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <ba9770e9-3ef4-4ff7-ad21-cbd65e08b25e at n2g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
> 	AEF <spamsink2001 at yahoo.com> writes:
>> On Jan 28, 11:44 am, billg... at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
>>> In article <b9489278-4168-437b-85e5-fff095da5... at l38g2000vba.googlegroups.com>,
>>>         AEF <spamsink2... at yahoo.com> writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> As I have said in the past, (and aparently at least Michael agrees) it's
>>> all a matter of opinion as I find quite the opposite.
>> OK.
>>>>                       And the ones I have usually show several versions
>>>> of the same command with the differences specified in the name of the
>>>> command via different paths. You know: path1/cp, path2/cp, etc., where
>>>> path1 and path2 may be very similar in appearance. Which one is the
>>>> one I will be running if I just specify cp? (This is intuitive?)
>>> It is to people who use Unix for a living.  And, apparently college
>>> freshman.
>> OK, it was late night when I've been posting these things. OK, it's
>> the one that's in the PATH. I'm just starting and for some reason I'm
>> just not in the Unix PATH frame of mind yet. (Maybe it's in part
>> because I hate the PATH trains!) But why the multiple versions of some
>> commands? Why the following?
>> SYNOPSIS
>>      /usr/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@] [file]...
>>      /usr/xpg4/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
>>      [file]...
>>      /usr/xpg6/bin/ls  [-aAbcCdeEfFghHilLmnopqrRstuvVx1@]
>>      [file]...
>> Why three versions?
> 
> My guess would be backwarsd compatability.  We already determined you
> use Solaris.  If you knew anything at all about Sun you would knoe that
> they have made major changes in their OS.  SunOS was strictly BSD based
> with a few SYSVisms provided.  Then came Solaris.  Totally SYSV.  But,
> Sun kept a number of BSDish utilities and commands around so as to not
> break totally break scripts that people had already on their systems.
> I have no idea what "xpg" is so I can't tell you what this particular
> set does.
> 
>>>> Someone at work showed me a website which reformmated the man pages
>>>> into something much easier to read. Can't be just me who finds the
>>>> original man pages visually difficult to read.
>>>> Also, I find English words much more intuitive and actually mostly, if
>>>> not partly, self explanatory.
>>> Once again, matter of opinion. And really rather Anglo-centric, don't
>>> you think?  So, then, how useful was VMS in Germany or France?
>> How useful is the term "awk" in any language! 
> 
> Yeahy, well 'awk" is kind of an exception.  And given the stature of the
> people involved, they should be allowed some idiosyncracies.  The letters
> in "awk" are the initials of its creators Aho, Weinberger & Kernighan.
> 

What SHOULD awk have been called?  awk and its successors nawk and gawk 
have generated a whole book about what they are and what they can do.
What single word would YOU use to describe the functionality?  Can't 
find one/think of one?  Neither can I!  I'm happy to call it awk or 
gawk.  I'm even happier to have it in my tool box in both VMS and Unix!
(Yes I have a VMS version of gawk.  And one of grep.)  If you're really 
nice to me, I'll tell you where you can get copies!