Xiaofan Chen wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 4:38 AM, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:
>> I'd like to know a shell that's common and ideally free (so that
>> scripts can be shared), that is multi-platform (the common
>> platforms) and that has a consistent and intuitive syntax. Any
>> ideas?
> 
> Bash? ;-)

Do you really want to say that bash has a consistent and intuitive
syntax? :)


>> This is exactly what I'm talking about... even people who normally
>> know their stuff seem to approach cmd.exe with a mindset of "it
>> can't do it anyway (because command.com twenty years ago couldn't do
>> it)" and won't even look whether it can do it. 
> 
> There must be a reason, right? 

I wonder what the reason is. Olin has a point with bad documentation.
But OTOH I find myself working with bash in a similar way as with
cmd.exe: when I need something that I don't know how to do, I search for
it, and generally I find a solution for both on the first page of
results. An example are the two issues Olin mentioned: easy solutions
among the first few hits when searching for it, yet Olin didn't know. 

I think the reason is not in the capabilities of cmd.exe, nor in its
documentation. It's in the attitude of the users, mostly. Posts about
something people can't do with bash usually have a tone of "how can I do
X in bash?", assuming that there is a solution. Posts about something
people can't do with cmd.exe usually have a tone of "cmd.exe sucks, it
can't even do X", assuming that there is no solution -- even if it is
/really/ easy to find. This is not a difference in capabilities of the
tools, it's a difference in attitude of the users.


> cmd.exe can probably do what you want with (lot of) efforts. Yet you
> can do things easier with other shells, like bash.

My point was not how good exactly cmd.exe is, but that most people who
complain about it didn't even go the first few steps in finding out
whether there is a solution to their problem. Among these first few
steps is, for me, a quick web search using the intuitive terms related
to the problem. IME, most problems of the type "cmd.exe sucks, it can't
even do X" that I've seen posted have a solution for X among the first
ten search results of an intuitive search, using the exact terms of the
poster.

I find that one big difference between bash and cmd.exe is that most
computer-knowledgeable people who use bash know better how to use it (on
average) than the same group of people who uses cmd.exe -- many seem to
have stopped at the level of command.com. There are a few other
indicators of this: the use of .bat files instead of .cmd files,
referring to the Windows shell as "MS-DOS", and so on. I find this
attitude surprising, as it often comes from people who don't show a
similar attitude with other questions.

Gerhard
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist