[Info-vax] Long uptime cut short by Hurricane Sandy

[Bill Gunshannon]

In article <00ACE34F.C7917D85 at sendspamhere.org>,
	VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG writes:
> In article <amvuioF8tilU2 at mid.individual.net>, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>In article <keeb7i$e15$1 at dont-email.me>,
>>	Stephen Hoffman <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
>>> On 2013-01-31 17:38:45 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:
>>> 
>>>> In article <kee7oh$m45$1 at dont-email.me>, Stephen Hoffman 
>>>> <seaohveh at hoffmanlabs.invalid> writes:
>>>>> On 2013-01-31 16:32:44 +0000,   VAXman-  @SendSpamHere.ORG said:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Or, skip the myriad excursions through LIB$CVT_TIME and LIB$CVT_DTIME, and
>>>>>> let DCL do one of the things it does best...
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> $ filename = filenameprefix+"_"+F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON")-"-"-"-"-"
>>>>>> "-":"-":"-"."+".dmp"
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yes.  That's definitely better than what I'd posted[1].
>>>>> 
>>>>> But you're not going to convince me that DCL is superior to bash here;
>>>>> that printf-style notation is just plain handy.
>>>> 
>>>> I never said that.  I was trying to get the focus on the scripting lingo's
>>>> features and not all of the utilities it can invoke.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> AFAIK, no command line interpreter and no shell is ever intended to be 
>>> used in isolation.
>>> 
>>> The whole point of a CLI or of a shell is allow scripting and to allow 
>>> gluing together various executables.
>>> 
>>> IMO, Unix just happens to be better at that gluing-together than is 
>>> VMS, albeit with the Unix shells typically being more cryptic.  
>>
>>Forgetting everyone here's dislike for the old Unix naming convention
>>as utility programs (like sed, awk or ls) are not part of the shell,
>>just what is cryptic about any Unix shell?
>>
>>>                                                                 That's 
>>> as much due to the general philospophy as anything else.  Unix 
>>> classically does many small bits stitched together, where VMS does big 
>>> and all-encompassing monolithic solutions.  Now is Unix perfect here?  
>>> Nope.  There's no metadata around what data is shoved through the pipes 
>>> (such as character encodings, for instance), so tossing certain sorts 
>>> of data through a pipe can get... "interesting".  But then this is also 
>>> the sort of solution that's seldom implemented on VMS.
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> 
>>>>> [1] Pedantic: what you've posted does not produce exactly same output.
>>>>> It's very close, but not the same.
>>>> 
>>>> $ filename = 
>>>> filenameprefix+"_"+F$fao("!19AS",F$cvtime(,"COMPARISON"))-"-"-"-"-" 
>>>> "-":"-":"+".dmp"
>>> 
>>> Yeah.  Or add the prefix and the underscore into the f$fao, as that 
>>> avoids clobbering caracters in the prefix.
>>
>>And tell me how the above is not cryptic?  Just what is the difference
>>between the first dash and the second?  Or the third?  And would anyone
>>normal determine that?  :-)
> 
> In DCL, one can delete a character from a string with - (subtract) and one
> can add strings with a "+" (just like in Hoff's bash example!).  I can, for
> example, remove the "$" in this string: "This is a $ sign." with -"$".  In
> DCL, the subtract character will delete the very first occurrance of said 
> character that's specified when encountered in the string.  If no character
> is found, nothing is done.  HB pointed out that using the ()s would define
> the scope better but I assumed no "funny" characters would be in the file
> prefix.  The multiple -"-" -"-" remove the dashes in the time and the -":"
> -":" remove the colons in the time.  Surely, you could see that if you'd
> have tried to understand it instead of choosing to denigrate DCL.

Getting crotchety in our old age, are we?  I didn't denigrate anything.
I just don't see how people who find Unix commands cryptic can say that
that isn't.

> 
> A lack of understanding of the semantics doesn't make it cryptic.  

And the same doesn't apply to Unix?  I have never found anything in
Unix to be cryptic.

>                                                                   And FWIW,
> I can hack a bash script too!  I'm responding to this thread from one of my
> Linux laptops!  I've spent the better part of my week trying to restore all
> of my environment, customizations and scripts after updating another Linux
> laptop.  I don't understand why the Linux folks insist on doing that but it
> has been their modus operandi.

Because they are a bunch of pre-pubescent geeks living in their mom's
basement who can't get a date and certainly have no real knowledge or
experience with real computers.
 
bill

-- 
Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton   |
Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>