[Coco] Modest proposal re: toolshed

[Steven Hirsch]

Boisy, et al,

Would anyone besides myself find it useful if the toolshed informational 
utilities (e.g. os9 dir) had an unadorned output mode that was sensitive 
to whether or not the list device was a tty?  For example, 
rather than, e.g.


(blank line)
                            Directory of nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,SYS
stdfonts        stdpats_2       stdpats_4       stdpats_16      stdptrs
ibmedcfont      isolatin1font   motd            helpmsg         errmsg
password        inetd.conf

we had this if redirected to a file:

stdfonts
stdpats_2
stdpats_4
stdpats_16
stdptrs
ibmedcfont
isolatin1font
motd
helpmsg
errmsg
password
inetd.conf

?

At a minimum, it would make shell scripting significantly easier.  My 
immediate motivation is to streamline the system-disk creation process as 
performed in Nitros-9.

Another idea:  Why not have the toolshed modification utilities understand 
wildcards?  So, rather than explictly listing a sequence of copied files 
for attr changes:

os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/OS9Defs
os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/RBFDefs
os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/SCFDefs
os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/SysType
os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/VTIODefs
os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/Defsfile

you could simply do:

os9 attr -q -npe -npw -pr -ne -w -r nos96809l2v030209coco3_becker.dsk,DEFS/*

If I'm the only person wishing for these, I'm probably not going to 
bother, but if it would be of general use then I'll take a look at 
implementation.


Steve



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