From: gray@cse.uta.edu (Ryan Neal Gray)
Subject: Re: What's wrong with DOS 4.01?  (was Re: Sharp PC-6220 -- good, inexpensive notebook)
Followup-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Summary: A clarification
Keywords: dos doskey myth
Organization: Computer Science Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 12:14:50 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.162631.4921@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov> williams@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov (Jim Williams) writes:
>In article <BzF47F.35t@constellation.ecn.uoknor.edu> norlin@midway.ecn.uoknor.edu (Norman Lin) writes:
>but I understand that MS-DOS 4.01 is not too bad.  Generally, I put
>DOS 3.3 on small machines and 5.0 on AT and higher, where the 5.0
>memory management is useful.  I may just start using 5.0 everywhere,
>as I've gotten quite spoiled by DOSKEY.
>
>Jim
>
>-- 
>Spoken: James W. Williams			Company: Hughes STX
>Internet: williams@nssdcs.gsfc.nasa.gov		Phone: +1 301 286-1131
>USPS: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; Code 633; Greenbelt, MD 20771
>Maryland Car Tags: DEV CAR

Why do I hear from everywhere that DOSKEY is almost reason enough to
upgrade to DOS 5.0?  These people must not know about things called
utilities.  Now I may not know all of what DOSKEY can do, but the main
things such as macro keys and command recall that you get spoiled on can
be had in several programs out there.  I use ALIAS with DOS 3.3 and am
quite happy.  I noticed that DOSKEY won't let you enter part of a
previous command and recall only those that match to avoid trekking back
through the command stack as ALIAS does.  These people would probably
wet themselves if they had ANARKEY that has command completion - talk
about getting spoiled!

This really draws back to something that I'm always reminding people of:
It's not magic; it's a program.   I just can't believe how MicroSlouch
has managed to delay putting some  fundamental features into the
operating system that have been in others for many years, then pass them
off as incredible new advancements in software technology when they
bother to include/copy it into their OS.  I'm not saying that DOSKEY
should be an integral part of DOS, but it should be provided like it is
as part of the external OS that you can add to or remove from to suit
your needs.  Sure, it would be nice to be able to write batch files
knowing that GETKEY was going to be available, but you would fill your
disk with just the DOS programs if all these utilities were installed
waiting to be used.  Actually, a  function like GETKEY and its ilk
should have been an internal function for batch files.  The  concept for
batch files I suppose is that they are things that only run unattended
in the middle of the night.  I think most would trade the  uselessness
of the VOL command (useless without considerable trickery) for the
utility of an internal GETKEY.  This is where DOS should take more after
its Unix heritage.  The VOL command shoud only spit out a terse one line
containing only the volume name; no more, no less.   This way you could
at least pipe the name to LABEL and transfer volume labels to copies
made on different media without the DISKCOPY command.  Likewise VER
should really only spit out a number, but this is something that would
be best as a standard environment variable for easy checking in batch
files.  

Well, you get the idea.

	- Ryan

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