page@swan.ulowell.edu (Bob Page) (02/17/88)
bryan@mothra.cs.utexas.edu wrote: >how to make popCLI remember the path of its parent CLI, and pass this >to its 'children.' FunKeys (by MicroSmiths) doesn't remember the path either. >How does one pass environments around in AmigaDOS in general? AmigaDOS doesn't have 'environments' per se. Manx came up with a version that uses a fake library called 'environment', Tomas Rokicki came up with a better way that also uses a fake library. Bill Hawes, author of ConMan & ARexx, has a shell coming out that uses a different concept: He uses a DOS handler ENV: that acts like a file system. You can copy files to it, and the names of the files are the variable names. The contents of the files are the expansion of the environment variables. What's useful about this? Well, the best thing is that you have loads of tools to manipulate environments ... just your normal DOS tools! In addition, you can do a lot of things that you can't get with a fake library, like look at the last modification time of each environment variable, have all languages/programs manipulate them in a standard way (don't need setenv/getenv or special SET programs), have multiple environments ("assign env: vdk:env" for normal work, and something like "assign env: df1:env" for some special application) with no pain and only one command, etc. I admit I didn't like this idea when I first heard it, but it's so easy (normal, regular, fast) to use & doesn't require you to memorize something new to get your job done, that I now use it all the time. Of course I still have to use the Manx stuff since the Manx compiler doesn't understand this (yet?), but I think this is the future. Actually Bill tells me that he got the idea from a well-known Amiga software wizard in West Chester, so maybe they're contemplating something similar. NOTE: this shell isn't yet available; I've been beta testing it. This shell (resident commands with checksum, aliases, pipes, built-in control flow [if, failat, etc], pushd/popd/cd, versatile prompt, etc), plus Conman 1.1 (search history, load history from file, save history to file, delete to end of word, configurable history size, etc) and ARexx, THE macro/programming language for the Amiga -- make for a great CLI environment. Also note I don't work for Bill Hawes, this is just praise for some great tools that have made my life with Amiga a lot easier. ..Bob -- Bob Page, U of Lowell CS Dept. page@swan.ulowell.edu ulowell!page "I don't know such stuff. I just do eyes." -- from 'Blade Runner'