From: Bill Kelly <billk@...>
Date: 2005-09-06T00:28:23+09:00
Subject: Re: windows shell

From: "Dave Burt" <dave@burt.id.au>
> Bill Kelly wrote:
>
> > Its commands don't output information in ways that facilitate
> > being piped together.
> 
> You can get native ports for most of these GNU utils to Windows; I use these 
> heaps. It's not a shell issue at all.

I had in mind 'dir' and the headers and footers it outputs, which
is a built-in command to cmd.exe, is it not?  But sorry for 
generalizing.  As I mentioned I use the Cygwin GNU tools, even if
under cmd.exe.

> > <snip vitriol>

Just to clarify, it wasn't directed at Austin, but MS-DOS.  :)

I'd stand by the hypothesis that the way the built-in 'dir' command
works is a symptom of the general lack of focus on program 
interoperability that pervades MS-DOS.

More cmd.exe fun:

How to invoke one program and use its output in the command line?
Ex: HOME=`pwd | cut -d/ -f1-4`

Being able to invoke sub-shells on the command line would be nice.
Ex: ( tar cf - /home ) | ( cd /mnt/backup; tar xvfp - )

How to flexibly redirect output streams?
Ex: 2>&1


Anyway sorry for more OT posting... I will do some Ruby
programming this instant.  :)


Regards,

Bill