rfrost@cs.ua.oz.au (Richard Frost) (02/22/90)
I have posted this to sys.amiga but have yet to hear a reply,
so I'll try the Amiga techos now.!
I have been looking for an Amiga shell with filename completion
for quite some time now and was pleased to see it in Steve Koren's shell.
I think this feature works very well in the RAM DISK and in a HARD DISK
but for a FLOPPY DISK?, well lets say I could grow old waiting for the
filename completion to finish!.
MY SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM:
============================
Steve, I pray you will read this as I hope this idea will be
used by you and many others who decide to implement filename completion.
Have a CACHE that stores all the known filenames (and disk names)
for a given directory. This CACHE can be updated whenever a user does
an 'ls' say OR by getting the user to execute an 'update cache' command
in the shell. In this way the user need only access the entire directory
of a disk ONCE and ONCE only for a resolution of a filename. The CACHE
could be maintained as long as the user wishes, allowing him to delete
known 'cache directories' at any time. Although this may seem a hack,
it would be quite a usable system as most programmers like me, use basically
the same set of disks (3 or 4) that are referenced AGAIN and AGAIN!
The CACHE feature could be turned on or off depending on whether
or not the user uses a HARD DISK or RAM DISK. It could be an 'options'
setting in the SKSH shell for instance.
The CACHE is also updated whenever the user manipulates files
from directories known to the CACHE, ie. copying, removing, renaming.
However, the CACHE will not be informed of changes to files (that IT knows
about) by OTHER PROCESSES! But I don't care about this, as it will be the
user's responsibility to keep the shell's cache updated when that occurs.
That is my idea, what do YOU think?
--
______________________________________________________________________________
_ ___ | Email Address: rfrost@spam.ua.oz.au
I) I_ |
I\ ichard I rost | FidoNet (ADAM LINK BBS): 3:680/805 Richard Frost
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THE AMIGA, the programmer's dream machine!!
Bewildered Earth Scientist: "How do you re-wire alien equipmnent like that??"
Dr. Who: "Its easy when you've had 900 years experience in alien technology."
______________________________________________________________________________waggoner@dtg.nsc.com (Mark Waggoner) (02/23/90)
In article <RFROST.90Feb22132824@spam.ua.oz.au> rfrost@cs.ua.oz.au (Richard Frost) writes: > I have posted this to sys.amiga but have yet to hear a reply, >so I'll try the Amiga techos now.! You missed. You set the distribution to comp.sys.amiga.tech, not the newsgroup. > I have been looking for an Amiga shell with filename completion >for quite some time now and was pleased to see it in Steve Koren's shell. >I think this feature works very well in the RAM DISK and in a HARD DISK >but for a FLOPPY DISK?, well lets say I could grow old waiting for the >filename completion to finish!. > >MY SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM: >============================ >... > Have a CACHE that stores all the known filenames (and disk names) FComp, which comes with William Hawes' WShell product does this. You'll have to buy it, but then that's why those Amiga dealers are in business. FComp seems to be quite flexible, though I haven't had a chance to really learn all about it. Among other things, It can search your command path to complete the first thing on the command line and fill in a command template when you use it to complete particular commands. WShell is well worth the money. -- Mark Waggoner Santa Clara, CA (408) 721-6306 waggoner@dtg.nsc.com Unofficially representing National Semiconductor Local Area Networks Group Officially misrepresenting myself.