goutal (09/06/82)
One person who presented an explanation of --rc filename suffixes asked in passing about possible alternates. Another pointed out how these files have, since their origins, come to include ANY file which is read upon startup of a program. I hereby donate my two cents, viz and to wit: TOPS-10 calls them ".INI" files, for "initialization". Most famous is "SWITCH.INI", which serves sort of the same function as ".profile" and friends -- it is a central repository of default values for 'switches' (like 'options' in Unix) for just about all programs. It is, like many such, just an ASCII file, with the lines of the form: ======== PROG /switch/switch/switch... -------- Any program that takes switches, including LOGIN, looks here for defaults. Of course, it's just a linear search, so if you have much in it, it slows down the running of most of your programs. They unfortunately do not have a law that says you must group all lines pertaining to a given program together, so every program that uses it must read the entire file (unless it doesn't want to!). Given that most TOPS-10 programs are controlled by switches, you get pretty much the same functionality as 'run command' files. For those programs that are not so switch-oriented, such as editors, there are other ".INI" files, such as "TECO.INI", and so forth. -- Kenn (decvax!)Goutal