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Unix & Linux: ZuLUNIX

214| Fri, 16 Nov 2007 20:57:00 GMT| barleycorn| Comments (13)
Greetings

I have been fiddling with UNIX type operating systems for years. There was something called COHERENT that ran on 286 computers. I have found UNIX commands annoying to remember so after all this time I thought of a solution I like. Maybe some other people will think it is worthwhile also. I have encountered 2 UNIX people that dislike it tho. One was actually hostile to it.

http://members.ispwest.com/barlowj/zulumag

"less" becomes "fileview" or "fv"

"ping" becomes "netecho"

The point is to make the commands EASY to remember the computer doesn't care what we type. It's nothing but electrical signals in the computer.

Barleycorn

Keywords & Tags: zulunix, unix, linux

URL: http://programming.itags.org/unix-linux-programming/101819/
 
«« Prev - Next »» 13 helpful answers below.
that was supposed to be:

http://members.ispwest.com/barlowj/zulumag.html

That's my problem with computer. Always remembering details.

Barleycorn

barleycorn | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:31:00 GMT |

don't like it because its not portable to any other system without setting up a system of elaborate aliases.

sharth | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:32:00 GMT |

What the heck is so hard to remember about "ping"?

:rolleyes:

Don't mess with POSIX...

bwkaz | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:33:00 GMT |

why would netecho be easier to remember than ping? plus its longer. what would you change ls to? alias ls='list_directory'?

escapecharacter | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:34:00 GMT |

dr == ls -lh
drr == ls -lhR
drrv == ls -lhR | less
drv == ls -lh | less

sharth | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:35:00 GMT |

I don't get it. More junk! Where's the hard part about remembering commands. OK, I could see that if you were a DOS user and want to make the commands the same.... Why not just create an alias? Just ad an alias to your .bashrc file. (or what ever shell that you use)
For example: alias ldir='ls -l|grep "^d"' will show directories only.

garskoci | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:36:00 GMT |

Originally posted by EscapeCharacter
why would netecho be easier to remember than ping? Heh. Another thing to think about is, what you think of as "easy to remember", someone else thinks is extremely difficult to remember.

No doubt the writers of ls, ping, less (man, for crying out loud...) etc. thought their programs' names were simple to remember...

bwkaz | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:37:00 GMT |

admittedly if someone has already learned the original command names there is no point to ZuLUNIX but if you are starting out from scratch where is the logic in "less"?

the original programmer could just as easily have named "ping" "echo" but the ping command obviously relates to the network. So if all network related commands start with net they will always be together and easy to find.

I have had two cases of experienced UNIX people disliking the idea. But if command names that don't make sense turn off newbies then it inhibits the growth of Linux. Do we want to challenge Macro$cam or not? ZuLUNIX has no effect on a system once installed in /usr/local/bin which is empty. The perl script installs it in one shot for all users. If you don't type zulu or one of its commands you don't know it is there.

Is this a case of TRADITIONALISTS maintaining the barrier to entry to the UNIX priesthood? LOL!

barleycorn

barleycorn

barleycorn | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:38:00 GMT |

OK, I'll say it again. You think that "ping" is hard to pick up on. I think that "net-echo" is hard to pick up on.

Who's to say which of us is right?

One newbie's "OMG, this command is so mis-named!" is "Wow, this makes perfect sense!" to another.

bwkaz | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:39:00 GMT |

personally, i think that these shortcut commands are jsut as hard to remember...

sharth | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:40:00 GMT |

i agree that its a horrible idea.
diskin and diskmnt are easier to remember than mount? and fildel instead of rm? give me a break!
if you want custom commands that make sense to you than use aliases (i personally like 'ls -la' aliased to 'la'). but what happens when you go to another computer and you've forgotten what the REAL shell commands are?

nouse66 | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:41:00 GMT |

Learning a command is learning a command.

Why bother learning what amounts to the wrong command?

I'll opine that a person's time is far better spent learning the correct, cross-platform commands.

Then again, I hated all DOS shells too. :D

lrngthehardway | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:42:00 GMT |

So when the newbie learns all these odd new commands then goes to use a non-ZuLUNIX'ed system, they're fscked. I think its far easier for them to learn the real commands then decide for themselves what shortcuts or aliases work best for them.

idxman | Sat, 17 Nov 2007 17:43:00 GMT |

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