Fred Linux Annoyance List.

>> 13) Most Unix command line are really obscure and clueless, I mean DOS
>> was
>> simple:
>>     copy, del, dir, backup, restore, chdir, rmdir, mkdir, echo, rem,
>> diskcopy


Interesting. I've always found DOS commands to be totally non-intuitive.
For example, you have "del" for delete, but "rmdir" for removing a
directory. Why not "deldir"?  Inconsistent. Don't get me started on
DELTREE.

You mention the "rem" command, which IIRC, is for REMARK. I can imagine
trying to "remove" a file using that command. No errors return because
it's just a remark, but that's inconsistent with every other language.
Don't confuse this with REN, which was used to rename files, and MOVE
which was used to rename directories (this changed in later versions).

Then there's xcopy. You need this specifically for directories. It took a
long time to figure this one out.

Then there's the crazy "find" utility. I want to find a file I'll use
something called "find" but DOS find doesn't do that.

DIR?  How is this more intuitive for listing files than ls? Then there's
all the flags for DIR that make no sense. /S for a recursive listing? You
type "DIR ," to view hidden files and "DIR ..." to show files without
extensions, unless you're in Win95/98 then it'll look upwards in the
directory tree.

CHDIR? By your own reasoning, why not CHANGEDIR? Same for MKDIR.

Want to unhide a file? There's ATTRIB, but why not just call it "UNHIDE"?

Want to page output to the screen? You can pipe some commands to MORE, but
try calling MORE directly and you'll get a COMMAND NOT FOUND.

>>
>>     Now ask a newbie what the following means WITHOUT thinking at all
>> (Homer
>> simpsons after 6 beers):
>>     dd, df, ln, ls, su, uname, ld, ldd, xxd, sg, shar
>>
>>     Now ask a newbie what the following alias means without thinking at
>> all:
>>     diskcopy, diskusage, filelink, dir, chuser, printsysinfo, linker,
>> dllinfo, hexdump, execgroup, shellarchive

So you'd rather have the experienced user have to symlink short commands
to longer commands that don't really match what the command does? E.g., dd
does a lot more than diskcopy. df and du will both show disk usage
information so diskusage as a command is ambiguous.

I understand what you're trying to say, but I don't agree that DOS COMMAND
is any more intuitive than bash. I do know that COMMAND.COM is insanely
crippled. Sure, it has much fewer commands, but the price you pay is that
you lose any power. I'll go with power any day.

>>
>>     Too long to type?
>>     Alias the other way around!!!!
>>     Having a alias dd='diskcopy' that would make way more sense.
>>     BAD BAD BAD UNIX design...