Re^4: OT: Advantage of not expanding wildcard in the shell

But as strange as it may seem, the main reason I choose not to use linux, is because I *really* don't like the shells. I prefer cmd.exe to all of those I have tried. I hear great things about zsh, but I have never used it--and I doubt that it would respond "properly" to the cursor keys-insert/delete/home/end/pgup/pgdn etc. and that is the biggest single bugbear for me of the unix shells.

(Since we're ridiculously off topic anyways)

If your shell isn't responding to home/pgdn/pgup/etc keys, thats merely a configuration issue with how the kernel (I think) treats the keycodes your keyboard sends, for example change .inputrc, which is fairly trivial, it has nothing to with the shell. My bash, on linux for example, respondes perfectly to the various insert, delete and etcetera keys.

Comment on Re^4: OT: Advantage of not expanding wildcard in the shell

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^5: OT: Advantage of not expanding wildcard in the shell by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 28, 2005 at 20:09 UTC
Actually, it's not the kernel, it's the fact that Unix has a much greater legacy than just a box with one user and a keyboard attached to it. In the Unix world, a keypress doesn't just diddle a few bits on a hardware port which you poll with a system call. It's communicated as part of a complex protocol implemented by the terminal you use. Applications read a raw protocol stream from STDIN and are expected to interpret it; this is where termcap or friends and all that devil's work comes in. I understand the whole shebang just well enough to make it work and then supress any memory of it. `:-)` Things seem to have gotten far, far better in this respect in recent years, though, with most stuff working out of the box. The effort this takes on the distributors' side should not be underestimated. Your post is partially correct in that the Linux kernel does implement a terminal for the text mode consoles, though. Makeshifts last the longest.	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re^5: OT: Advantage of not expanding wildcard in the shell
by Aristotle (Chancellor) on Jan 28, 2005 at 20:09 UTC

Actually, it's not the kernel, it's the fact that Unix has a much greater legacy than just a box with one user and a keyboard attached to it. In the Unix world, a keypress doesn't just diddle a few bits on a hardware port which you poll with a system call. It's communicated as part of a complex protocol implemented by the terminal you use. Applications read a raw protocol stream from STDIN and are expected to interpret it; this is where termcap or friends and all that devil's work comes in.

I understand the whole shebang just well enough to make it work and then supress any memory of it. :-) Things seem to have gotten far, far better in this respect in recent years, though, with most stuff working out of the box. The effort this takes on the distributors' side should not be underestimated.

Your post is partially correct in that the Linux kernel does implement a terminal for the text mode consoles, though.

Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]