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Date:      Sun, 4 Oct 1998 22:43:57 +0200 (CEST)
From:      Andrzej Bialecki <abial@nask.pl>
To:        "Louis A. Mamakos" <louie@TransSys.COM>
Cc:        Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl>, Jerry Hicks <jhicks@glenatl.glenayre.com>, FreeBSD Small <freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: Command-line i/f (Re: PicoBSD) 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.02A.9810042239180.20712-100000@korin.warman.org.pl>
In-Reply-To: <199810032345.TAA21910@whizzo.transsys.com>

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On Sat, 3 Oct 1998, Louis A. Mamakos wrote:

> 
> > Again, I fully agree with you - that's also my intention. And I see a
> > Forth -based shell as a means to accomplish it - to glue all these
> > elements together, at the same time giving it flexibility and programming
> > abilities far beyond those of /bin/sh.
> 
> I can certainly see how having an extensible shell would be a very
> attractive thing.  But if you expect mere mortals to be able to
> run (and extend) the thing, I think a FORTH-based approach is doomed
> to fail (again).
> 
> Why wouldn't something based on TCL be a better choice?  Sysadmins are
> probably more likely to be familiar with it (perhaps due to experience
> with "expect").  It has a pretty reasonable syntax, and perhaps
> a more familair procedural type model.

The reason fo this is very simple: size. Give me a complete TCL
interpreter in 50kB, and then I'll begin to think seriously about using
it.

OTOH, if you define a carefully constructed set of Forth words, normal
users may even be unaware of running a Forth interpreter, and power-users
will have a power tool.


Andrzej Bialecki

--------------------   ++-------++  -------------------------------------
 <abial@nask.pl>       ||PicoBSD||   FreeBSD in your pocket? Go and see:
 Research & Academic   |+-------+|       "Small & Embedded FreeBSD"
 Network in Poland     | |TT~~~| |    http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/
--------------------   ~-+==---+-+  -------------------------------------


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