BSD & Sys5 Job Control

[roy at phri.UUCP]

In article <3702 at teddy.UUCP> jpn at teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) writes:
> Both shl and "job control" are unnecessary if you have a true windowing
> system.  Both are HACKS to provide capabilities close to window systems
> using dumb terminals.

	Weeeell, I don't know about that being 100% true.  I've got a Sun
on my desk with lots of lovely windows, and I still use regular 4.2 job
control for several reasons.

	First, starting up a new window is expensive both in terms of
memory and cpu time; on an otherwise quiet 3/50, it takes a few seconds to
get a new shelltool window up.  Even if I just open up one of my random
iconic shells, it still takes a second or so.  Hitting ^Z gets me a new %
almost instantaneously, plus I don't have to take my fingers off the
keyboard.

	Second, every window has its own history list; sometimes this is
good, sometimes it's a pain.  BTW, I find that printing a history list and
doing "put then get" from it is usually much faster and easier than all
that !foo:s/bar/baz stuff.

	Third, it's not that uncommon that I have something big running in
a window off to the side someplace and want to stop it for a while so my
quick troff job doesn't have to compete for CPU cycles with my monster
compile job.

	The bottom line is that while much of what I used to use csh job
control for I now do better with windows, both have their uses and I
wouldn't want to be without either.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016

"you can't spell deoxyribonucleic without unix!"