New (GNU) kernels--what I think

Richard Tobin richard at aiai.ed.ac.uk
Sun Jun 11 05:45:03 AEST 1989


>I would like to see some sort of extension to command completion that
>enabled shells to complete not only the command name, but option
>names, file names, and anything else in the command line.  Each word
>would be completed in exactly the context in which the command would
>use it.

Much of this functionality could be added to current shells.  The
shell could read a file giving a specification of the syntax for each
command (extensible by the user, of course).  This wouldn't be
perfect, of course, since to specify the syntax of every command
completely is tricky to say the least, but it could at least handle
"stty everything".  (Of course, you can always put a file called
"everything" in your home directory :-)

I've even used a shell with spelling correction (or DWIM).  It's
pretty disconcerting!

-- Richard

-- 
Richard Tobin,                       JANET: R.Tobin at uk.ac.ed             
AI Applications Institute,           ARPA:  R.Tobin%uk.ac.ed at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Edinburgh University.                UUCP:  ...!ukc!ed.ac.uk!R.Tobin



More information about the Comp.unix.wizards mailing list