fostel@ncsu.UUCP (06/09/83)
For some time I have manually extracted worthwhile items from my mail
box and stored them as individual files to be operated on from the sh.
Its transparently obvious that this is superior to special mail processors
like mail -- to me anyway. A number of years ago, just this sort of
discussion was made at a UNIX conference (if memory serves the speaker
was from Rand) and the collective yawn was punctuated primarily by a few
people who ridiculed it for wasting disk space. One thing that puzzles
me about the use of things like "folders" in a mail systems is -- beyond
the distinctly appealling name -- how does this differ from use of a sub-
directory? Is there some sort of cross-folder corrolation that would
help in the case of single letters that would like to be in more than one
folder? (Always gave me gas in the paper world.)
NOW, if indeed the era of sh driven mail may be dawning, how much longer
will I have to wait for the same fate to befall make and ITS largely
redundant command language?
----GaryFostel----