From owner-freebsd-small Sun Oct 4 13:40:36 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA23379 for freebsd-small-outgoing; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 13:40:36 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from korin.warman.org.pl (korin.nask.waw.pl [148.81.160.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA23281 for ; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 13:40:20 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from abial@nask.pl) Received: from localhost (abial@localhost) by korin.warman.org.pl (8.9.1/8.8.5) with SMTP id WAA25526; Sun, 4 Oct 1998 22:43:58 +0200 (CEST) X-Authentication-Warning: korin.warman.org.pl: abial owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 22:43:57 +0200 (CEST) From: Andrzej Bialecki X-Sender: abial@korin.warman.org.pl To: "Louis A. Mamakos" cc: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai , Jerry Hicks , FreeBSD Small Subject: Re: Command-line i/f (Re: PicoBSD) In-Reply-To: <199810032345.TAA21910@whizzo.transsys.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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 -------------------- ++-------++ ------------------------------------- ||PicoBSD|| FreeBSD in your pocket? Go and see: Research & Academic |+-------+| "Small & Embedded FreeBSD" Network in Poland | |TT~~~| | http://www.freebsd.org/~picobsd/ -------------------- ~-+==---+-+ ------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-small" in the body of the message