[Info-vax] Command Line Versus Command Line

[Michael S]

On Thu, 23 May 2024 09:28:16 -0400
Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:

> On 5/23/2024 6:19 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> > Lawrence D'Oliveiro  <ldo at nz.invalid> wrote:  
> >> And just to add to the fun, CP/M, MS-DOS and then Windows NT all
> >> copied the basic DEC-style command line architecture, while
> >> neglecting the crucial part of a built-in command parser to handle
> >> more sophisticated syntax. So Microsoft’s recent rediscovery that
> >> “the command line is cool” remains hampered by this brain-dead
> >> underlying architecture.  
> > 
> > To give them credit, Microsoft finally realized that command.com was
> > hopeless and started from first principles with Powershell.
> > Powershell is easily as good as anything DEC had in 1974 and as
> > such is a huge advance for the desktop.  
> 
> Just so that everyone know the history:
> 
> command.com - 1980
> cmd.exe - 1987 (backwards compatible with command.com, but
> significantly extended functionality, often via obscure syntax though)

Thanks.
Until reading your post I didn't realize that cmd.exe existed before Nt
3.1 (1993).
Personally I often feel that cmd.exe is an improvement on it's
successor.
> Windows Script Host / VBScript - 1995 (not interactive, scripts only, 
> but very powerful via WMI)
> PowerShell - 2006
> 
> Not super new.
> 
> :-)
> 
> Arne
> 

BTW, I tried to figure out what "command line architecture" Lawrence is
talking about, but didn't quite succeed.
As far as Win32 CreateProcess() function is concerned, command line
is just a string. If caller omits applicationName parameter then
system does small amount of parsing to find application name in command
line. But when caller provides applicationName parameter, which is a
most logical thing to do in any non-interactive/non-shell scenario,
then OS does not care at all about content of command line. In both
cases OS does not modify command line and passes it to child
process as is.
So, the only difference between *nix and Windows is array of
ASCIIZ strings (today, of UTF8 strings) vs single, possibly very long,
null-terminated ASCII or UTF16 string.