Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1998 10:11:50 +1000 From: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> To: Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk> Cc: Tim Gerchmez <fewtch@serv.net>, freebsd-newbies@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Pine and Pico Message-ID: <19980618101150.14704@welearn.com.au> In-Reply-To: <19980617205005.51409@nothing-going-on.org>; from Nik Clayton on Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 08:50:05PM %2B0100 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> <19980617205005.51409@nothing-going-on.org>
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On Wed, Jun 17, 1998 at 08:50:05PM +0100, Nik Clayton wrote:
> 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.
Sure, it all makes good sense. It's just that people like you seem to
have the ability to pull the correct word out of the air and then go find
it. I usually work out half a dozen synonyms and then find the manual
writer has used yet another :-) When I find it, I go "oh yeah, come to
think of it, that sounds like the word a computery person would use"
> > > 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?
"the little bits of stuff you add on the end after typing a command"
> 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.
Yes!! That's me!! :-)
I can't phrase what I'm looking for in a meaningful fashion.
Now, if I phrased that last statement in a meaningful fashion, perhaps I
can find out how to learn to do it better?
> 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.
I don't know that a shell programming glossary would be enough, but it
would cover a lot of what I'm missing. I suspect that a lot of the
language that is used, in man pages and general communication about
problems and how things work, is language that is familiar to C
programmers. Most of the books I've seen show how-to, but skimp on
important concepts and definitions in order to be more appealing.
--
Regards,
-*Sue*-
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