friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) (08/22/89)
Hi folks,
This really belongs in comp.sys.ibm.pc, but I don't get that
group and UNIX wizards who might end up on a DOS project need to
know this anyway. I recently got stuck on a project like this,
and I was very quickly losing my sanity. DOS sucks in a massive
way, and I knew an ulcer (or baldness) was just a matter of weeks
away. For instance, the DOS equivalent of the grep command is
FIND, but if you're in a directory full of source, the command
FIND "my_function" *.c *.h
doesn't work because it won't take a wildcard for the filename.
Aaaaaaargh!
Just before I was ready to jump off the bridge I picked up
the Mortice Kern Systems toolkit for DOS, and I am happy to
report that my life is wonderful again. This package includes
about a hundred tools with a total UNIX flavor, including a real
vi, ksh, egrep, cpio and just about every other tool that makes
sense plus some that don't (they even provide a login facility
if you feel like it).
Ksh is particularly wonderful, with aliases and command
history editing just like you're used to. The shell converts the
DOS \ pathname component to the traditional /, so the entire
environment looks as much like UNIX as is humanly possible.
They include excellent docs in UNIX man page format, and
in many cases, the man page won't even let you know you're running
a DOS package.
It took me all of fifteen seconds to wonder how I ever
got along without it, and anybody using DOS for more than a couple
of minutes a year *must* get the MKS Toolkit. It retails for about
$179 and is a small price to pay for your mental health.
Again, sorry if this is the wrong group, but I'm really
in love at the moment. Stick this in the back of your mind in
case you ever get sentenced, er, "assigned" to a DOS project.
We now bring you back to your regularly-scheduled UNIX group.
Steve
--
Stephen J. Friedl / V-Systems, Inc. / Santa Ana, CA / +1 714 545 6442
3B2-kind-of-guy / {attmail uunet}!vsi!{bang!}friedl / friedl@vsi.com
"Diet Mountain Dew has the same pH and density of urine." - Newsweek, 31-Jul-89