From owner-freebsd-newbies Wed Jun 17 13:27:44 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id NAA28937 for freebsd-newbies-outgoing; Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:27:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA28901 for ; Wed, 17 Jun 1998 13:27:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.8.8/8.8.8) id UAA28186; Wed, 17 Jun 1998 20:50:05 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Message-ID: <19980617205005.51409@nothing-going-on.org> Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1998 20:50:05 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: Sue Blake , Nik Clayton Cc: Tim Gerchmez , freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pine and Pico References: <3.0.5.32.19980615232720.007f66f0@mx.serv.net> <3.0.5.32.19980615232720.007f66f0@mx.serv.net> <19980617002803.07527@welearn.com.au> <3.0.5.32.19980616123420.007ede10@mx.serv.net> <19980617002151.21641@nothing-going-on.org> <19980617180012.64598@welearn.com.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i In-Reply-To: <19980617180012.64598@welearn.com.au>; from Sue Blake on Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 06:00:12PM +1000 Organization: Nik at home, where there's nothing going on Sender: owner-freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 06:00:12PM +1000, Sue Blake wrote: > > would show you the information you're looking for in the "Invocation" > > section. > > Of course, the "Invocation" section! Jeez, I'd never have thought of that > word, glad you mentioned it :-) Well, it's only 2 and a half (or thereabouts) pages in on a 25 line display :-) And, when you think about it, you only pass the parameters when you 'invoke' the program. > > Alternatively, you could look at some existing shell scripts on your > > system to see if they do it. /etc/rc, /etc/rc.serial and /etc/rc.firewall > > have examples of examining the positional parameters passed to a script > > (although, granted, they're not the easiest code to understand). > > "positional parameters"? I reckon it'd be much easier to get info out of > man pages if some of these words were more familiar, and I guess that > sort of grows on you after doing battle with man pages for a while. What would be a more familiar term? As far as I can tell, any term you use for them is going to carry overtones of where ever you first learned the term. With my "Hmm, that's interesting" hat on, I notice that Tim's original message didn't name (exactly) what he was talking. He said > What's the equivalent in Unix of %1, %2, etc in a DOS batch file? At the risk of misrepresenting Tim's position, if he can't phrase what he's looking for in a meaningful fashion (Tim: I mean that as "You don't know the meaning of those terms" not "You're a blithering idiot", please don't take offence) then finding the answer is going to be difficult no matter what. Keep in mind that the system manual pages are not meant to be tutorials, they're references. The comp.unix.shell FAQ would probably have been more useful. [ And to second guess your next question "How did you know the newsgroup existed?" -- I didn't. I asked my newsreader for all newsgroups that contained the word "shell" in the name, just on the off chance. ] > There isn't a glossary anywhere, is there? Probably, but you'll need to shell[1] out some money. I would imagine that O'Reilly do a decent shell programming book which probably has a glossary. N [1] OK, I know, it was a very bad joke. Sorry. -- You are in a maze of twisty signature files all the same. -- You are in a maze of twisty signature files all alike. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message