>> I always wondered why the hell AmigaDOS provided this lame little "more" 
>> command. Or why it had "type". I was even more perplexed by "ed" - a 
>> program that lets you edit a text file one line at a time by typing in 
>> utterly cryptic instructions. And I often wondered why the "dir" command 
>> has a "SHOW=" option.
> 
>   That sounds to me more like DOS than unix.

Actually, FWIW, AmigaDOS accepts both "dir" and "list". (But NOT "ls". 
Although you can create it as a shell alias if you want...)

AmigaDOS uses pathname syntax similar to MS-DOS. (There is no "/". There 
is "FD0:", "FD1:", "CD0:", "RAM:", "PAR:", "SER:"...) But in places it 
uses paths in a vaguely Unix way. (There is a "CON:", which opens a new 
GUI window. There is a "SPK:" or similar which renders using the speach 
synthesizer.) It had Unix-style piping, and the famous Unix "ed" 
program. (Don't ask me if it was compatible! But it certainly worked in 
a similarly cryptic way to the real Unix program does.)

It also had the ability to create "assigns", which are very vaguely like 
symlinks. Basically I can create a thing called "FOO:" which actually 
points to any folder in the system - or possibly another assign! Rather 
than always looking for the fonts on C:\FONTS or some such like Windoze 
does, it would look in FONTS: - which could be assigned to any pathname 
in the system. [Hence my ability to split my system disk across two 
floppies.]

In fact, unlike a symlink, you could assign FOO: to *multiple* paths. So 
it's kind of like having a search path - but not just for executable 
files, for ANY kind of file! (That includes any arbitrary kind a file an 
application might want to track down.) And it just looks like a normal 
pathname.

Basically, AmigaDOS was "like" MS-DOS and also "like" Unix and also 
completely unlike either of them. Strange little hybrid thing... but 
very useful.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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