[X-Unix] 10.5 cli -what's up with 'more'?

[David Ledger]

At 22:37 +0000 30/11/07, Stroller wrote:
>On 30 Nov 2007, at 06:32, David Ledger wrote:
>>  That's the way some of the Linux distributions are going - at 
>>least, the HP RedHat one is. It's the thing I most dislike about 
>>Linux. Lots of people making trivial changes to make it the way 
>>*they* think it should be. Under HP RedHat, 'ls' sorts the '.' 
>>files amongst the others. Why?
>Are you sure this isn't configured in the distro's default 
>.bash_profile or .bashrc? (or /etc/profile?)

Does the same when using /bin/ls, so it's not an inherited alias or 
function. I work under ksh with my own aliases pointing back at 
/bin/ls anyway.

>The GNU versions of the "standard utilities" are different from 
>those in Posix, System V or the BSDs, but I personally think these 
>changes are often (much needed) improvements upon the originals and 
>are generally for the best. IMO Bash & the GNU utilis are what a 
>modern Unix shouldbe aiming for - it's certainly my expectation in 
>terms of ease-of-use.

I've yet to find a change that I would class as a much needed 
improvement other than 'tar's new unwillingness to archive from '/'. 
I've no problem with them making the changes they do, as long as they 
require a flag, environment variable or '.' file to trigger them. 
Just making arbitrary changes break what would be cross platform 
scripts.

When I used to do 'ssh <host> <command>' I now have to do
	case "$(ssh <host> uname)" in
	Linux)	ssh <host> <Linux version of command> ;;
	*)	ssh <host> <command> ;;
	esac
or I would if I didn't have a local cache of what each host runs to 
query instead.

As for ease of use, I don't know what is easier about Linux. One of 
the original command line objectives of Unix, never use two 
keystrokes where one would do, is lost in Linux with its 
--givetheoptionalongnamesopeopleknowwhatitsdoes flags that you can't 
remember.

>I'd be surprised if Dead Rat - or any other modern distro - is using 
>any other version of `ls` than the GNU one. I think that - with a 
>bit of hunting around - it should be possible to pin down how `ls` 
>is being called and get it to behave the way you expect.

I wouldn't know what the GNU one is like. My Linux exposure is small, 
as it's mainly useful on the desktop. These machines are some that 
are used at the enterprise level, and proving weekly that it's not 
quite ready yet.

David


-- 
David Ledger - Freelance Unix Sysadmin in the UK.
HP-UX specialist of hpUG technical user group (www.hpug.org.uk)
david.ledger at ivdcs.co.uk
www.ivdcs.co.uk