<sarcasm>What? Are you kidding? Change syntax away from a paradigm
created when punch-cards were considered high-tech?? Just because a few
(million) people consider the line command difficult becuase of the cult-ish
syntax is no reason to change it! They should be like the rest of us UNIX
geeks!!</syntax>
Seriously, I see no reason why we can't have a new CLI syntax. Basically,
some one (or some grop) simply needs to come up with a more up-to-date
language syntax for CLI. It does not have to be artificially intelligent,
becuase let's face it, natural language is WAAAY too hard to parse. But at
the very least it could be helpful and clear.
While more "shell" oriented, why not make a shell like Kermit or Cisco IOS?
Basically, if as long as you don't have another command that starts with the
same letters, you can abbreviate. Say that you want to do a list of
directories ("ls"). Well, instead of having to memorize "ls", you can
simply type, "list" and there you go. However, as long as no other command
starts with "li", then you could also type, "li" and it would autocomplete
the command to "list" and run.
WOW! easy as pie!
Also, the arguments could be done the same way:
li a l
woudl be the same as
ls -la
because as long as an ARGUMENT'S letters are not used by arguments, they too
can be completed.... Even better, you could keep the same syntax as normal
simply by saying that if you precede arguments by a "-", then it separates
the rest of the arguments with spaces. So,
li -la
would equal
li l a
which would equal
list long all
which would of course be the same as
ls -la
See how easy it would be to have a new, fresh, GOOD syntax for a CLI but
keep the power user in the loop???
"Guillermo S. Romero / Familia Romero" wrote:
> jwhite sonic net (2001-05-21 at 1830.20 -0700):
> > graphics or multi-media production on a command line, but why can a lot
> > of people get certain kinds of work done more quickly at a command line
> > if they're used to it than in a GUI?
>
> Cos in the end, there will be the command line. ;]
>
> Seriously, change the cryptic CLI shells to a natural languaje one and
> make it smarter (artificial inteligence), and you get what people will
> be able to use quickly cos it will be like giving orders to another
> person, but machine based so it is targeted at repetitive and boring
> tasks: "Machine, process my mail, do a resume of it and also show me
> titles of all work messages" (and that via voice or keyboard, whatever
> user wants / can).
>
> Well, now back to what we have, CLI and GUI with stupid computers.
>
> GSR
>
>
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