From: tommy@lynx.msc.cornell.edu.UUCP (Mike Thompson,332,54714,2734927)
Subject: Re: tell me i'm wrong (braindead design in os2)
Originator: tommy@snoopy.msc.cornell.edu
Organization: Cornell-Materials-Science-Center
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 15:59:01 GMT

From article <1egn4dINNklu@agate.berkeley.edu>, by ucbked@athena (Earl H. Kinmonth):
> i have just started reading about os2 and have bought a copy to play
> with.  so far i've noticed three things that bother me:
> 
> a) file names are always shown in upper case.  is os2 case insensitive?
> is upper case required?  do ibm programmers have six fingers (one for
> the shift key)?  are they still thinking in terms of the o26/o29
> keypunches and bcd coding?  reading os2 takes me back to my first
> programming experiences in the early 1960s.  i thought os2 was a modern
> system oriented to the future....

First, OS/2 is bright enough to be case retentative, but not case sensitive.
Numerous utilities will give you upper or lower case output.  If you want
a modern OS, at least dump the FAT system from DOS and use HPFS.  Then you
get upper/lower without the $#&%##$ confusion of foo, FOO, Foo, FoO that
accompanies UNIX.

> b) path separation is always shown with the back(assward) slash (\).  is
> this hard wired or can it be switched (as in drdos, early msdos)?  do
> system calls accept both / and \ as in dos or is one stuck with this
> braindead convention?  if nothing else it makes programming in c that
> much more troublesome?

System calls (programming) happily take either forward or backslash.  The
only thing limiting it in the kernal is the leftover convention of allowing
the forward / as an option deliminator.  I also would love to see a kernal
patch that forced use of - for options, but allow \ or / for path separators.
All of the utilities I write require - options so filenames can be either.
Have written a command line editor (trivial on top of cmd) which translates
/ to \ before passing it to cmd.exe.  Solves problem for moment.  But hopefully
IBM is listening and will give us the \/ option soon.

> c) os2 uses the braindead and redundant CR/LF convention from msdos.  do
> os2 utilities work the text files that have only line feeds or must one
> run unix files through a filter?  programming utilities to work with
> either convention is trivial, but for some reason (ideological?) it is
> not done (cpp in Borland c and c++ is a classic example of user-hostile
> programming).

Amazingly, most OS/2 utilities tolerate the absence of the LF from files (type
is a notable exception).  Compilers and anything using standard C read calls
happily take files unconverted from our UNIX system.  UNIX has more of a
problem in that is DISPLAYS the stupid CR rather than transparently deleting
it from the stream.  Who's breaddead, UNIX or OS/2 - you can make your own
call.  For me, I like the old PRIME system that dumped CR's from the stream
during reading.  You could have them or not and never care.

UNIX carries as much "compatibility" baggage as OS/2.  It's really where you
are coming from as to who is brain dead.

---------------------
  ____ ___   ___    ___        Michael O. Thompson
   /  /  / / / /  / / / \ /    Materials Science & Engineering
  /  /__/ / / /  / / /  /      329 Bard Hall -- Cornell University
                               Ithaca, NY  14853
tommy@msc.cornell.edu          Ph: (607) 255-4714

OS/2:  For the few, the proud, the devoted!

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