[X-Unix] Hiding apps from the command line

[Eugene Lee]

On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 06:49:56PM +0100, Kirk McElhearn wrote:
: 
: On 3/26/04 6:05 PM, "Stroller" <MacMonster at myrealbox.com> wrote:
: 
: > You're missing an flag. You either need a flag for "hide" (the same as
: > running the command without a flag) or you need a flag to specify that
: > the next argument is the app name. Otherwise someone will, eventually,
: > discover that the command is unable to hide an app named o (or -o, as
: > the cae may be).
: 
: I don't agree. I think it's good to make it as simple as possible, so that
: without a flag you can still do something. I originally wondered if it
: wouldn't have been good to make it interactive - when you type hide, the
: shell asks Which application do you want to hide?, then you type the
: response and press return. Or, when you type hide, you see a list of
: options, and type a letter, or a letter and app name to hide/show it.

It's a matter of personal preferences of what you want it to do.  Both
interactive and non-interactive interfaces have their pros and cons.
One sacrifices ease for speed, and the other is vice versa.

: Also, it might have been more interesting to make one called hide and
: another called show, but that gets confusing....

The original request was for a command-line solution to hide an app.
Based on that request, the original code only hides one app by name.
Heck, even the name of the shell script got named "hide" after the
generic action it performs for the user.  But as people ask for more
features, the command itself evolves until the syntax becomes quite
convoluted because what it does now no longer exactly matches what it
did before.

Aren't Unix commands fun?  :-)


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/