On Jun 12, 2007, at 4:41 PM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

> When I type a letter, that starts to filter down, e.g. typing 'e'
> into the filter field results in 1k bookmarks listed. And so on
> -- it's (almost, of course) instantaneous, and it doesn't require
> an additional (superfluous) keystroke.

There's a long history to "smart" command line parsers, probably
starting with TENEX in the mid 1970s.  DEC's Tops20 had both
keyword and filename "completion" (with "escape" as the completion
character, and "guide words") and context sensitive help via "?"
Popular patches added partial filename completion.  This was all
designed for slow serial terminals, some of which were hardcopy,
so the need for explicit help characters made sense, I guess.
I have some copies of "ULTCMD" from 1978 or so, claiming to be
based on the RISOS command scanner (which I've never heard of.)
It continually fills in the max length of matching keyword, ignoring
autofilled parts that you also type.  It was excessive, IMO, but it
didn't stop me from doing a port to apple ][ Basic :-)  Cisco copied
their parser behavior from tops20.  Others have copied from cisco. heh.

The idea of extending this sort of matching parser from prefix matching
to search-based matching as (I think) you describe for bookmarks
sounds pretty neat, and of course todays displays and windowing
systems make the need/use of special characters unnecessary.

BillW
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