[net.micro.pc] Unix like command shell for PC-DOS

rsellens@watdcsu.UUCP (Rick Sellens - Mech. Eng.) (07/26/85)

In article <225@sdcarl.UUCP> andy@sdcarl.UUCP (Andrew Voelkel) writes:
>I am considering the possibility of writing some subset of what looks like
>a unix "shell" (really just a history mechanism to cut down on repeated
>long command lines), since queries as to the existence of such a facility
>have been unsuccessfull.

I have written a shell that we are currently beta testing. It seems to
be fairly robust, but I don't want to make any guarantees yet. (I didn't
want to respond to the earlier discussion because it was far from
complete at that time.)

The features are:
	- full featured command line editing (like the basic editor)
	- history - previous commands selected for editing using arrow keys.
	- aliasing - fully recursive, with detection of circular references.
		(ie "alias ls ls -lu" is ok)
	- parses single and double quotes reasonably so that you can send
	  characters like <,>,| etc to a program without DOS interpreting
	  them as redirection.
	- incorporates a virtual device name facility which allows the 
	  definition of names which point to paths, for shorter command
	  lines.
		ie
			vdev thesis c:\rick\school\droplets\thesis\
			ed thesis:chap1

At the moment I'm not too sure how I want to handle this. I'm leaning 
towards "no frills" packaging and a price around $30. The other alternative
is to cast it loose as shareware. Is there enough of a market for
something like this to make it worth the effort? Please let me know by
mail.


Rick Sellens
UUCP:  watmath!watdcsu!rsellens
CSNET: rsellens%watdcsu@waterloo.csnet
ARPA:  rsellens%watdcsu%waterloo.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa