Conversion Purgatory

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Andybaby

but if you can script in command line you can create a GUI, seriously. its 2008, no one seriously has used command line in over 15 years for anything of importance on a day to day operation.

That is most definitely false.

It is rather the case in some situations that if only a graphical interface is available it is usually to limited and you cannot do what you need to to in certain situations. System administrators nearly always prefer command line tools.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by Andybaby

but if you can script in command line you can create a GUI, seriously. its 2008, no one seriously has used command line in over 15 years for anything of importance on a day to day operation.

lolololololol

lolololololololololol

lololololol

Oh dear.... Must... stop... laughing....

Whew.

But I can see how someone who's only used the Windows command shell might think that -- it has almost no history support, rudimentary completion of filenames only, and completely counter-intuitive interaction with the windowing environment. But I can assure you that on every other OS every software and IT professional I know does everything via command-line tools except for tasks where a key aspect of the task itself involves visual feedback (e.g., Web browsing).

[kacir]

Originally Posted by Andybaby

its 2008, no one seriously has used command line in over 15 years for anything of importance on a day to day operation.

Come ON!
you can't be serious.

*I* even use commandline in my favourite text editor.
Yes I do use an editor that features a command line. Incredibly powerfull one. Called Vim.
Just look at the example I posted in a thread a few days ago
----------------------
You can write a command in Vim saying
"find every line NOT ending with dot, question mark, exclamation point or closing quote, optionally followed by a space character and join it with the next line"
:vglobal/[.!?"']\s*$/join
I often abbreviate the above command this way:
:v/[.!?"']\s*$/j
That is it.
----------------------

I also use commandline in AutoCAD.
I can draw much, MUCH quickly than my "Point anc click on menu and/or toolbar" coworkers. I use commands typed on a keyboard.

And do not get me started on Linux, Solaris, VMS or Unix administration.

and do not forget all those Cisco administrators

[HarryT]

Well, in fairness, GUIs do have their place. Eg, if you want to copy a group of unrelated files from one place to another, it's quicker to graphically select them in a file browser than it is to type in their names; but if they can be conveniently specified by wildcard names, the CLI can be a lot more efficient.

Ideally, people should be comfortable with both, and use the best tool for the job at hand.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kacir

Just look at the example I posted in a thread a few days ago
----------------------
You can write a command in Vim saying
"find every line NOT ending with dot, question mark, exclamation point or closing quote, optionally followed by a space character and join it with the next line"
:vglobal/[.!?"']\s*$/join
I often abbreviate the above command this way:
:v/[.!?"']\s*$/j
That is it.
----------------------

But, to be fair, you don't necessarily need a CLI tool for things like that. There are lots of "GUI" editors which support powerful regex syntax in their "search and replace" operations, which is what it's most useful for. A decent S&R and a macro facility and you can do pretty much what you want.

[llasram]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Eg, if you want to copy a group of unrelated files from one place to another, it's quicker to graphically select them in a file browser than it is to type in their names;

I would actually dispute even that if using a decent shell with command-completion. It'd have to be a really weird case, like there are lots of files in the directory, and you want to copy over a specific three of them, and their filenames are random so you'd need to type them out instead of completing them, *but* the ones you want are arranged alphabetically so they show up next to each other in the GUI. Something like that. I'd be willing to bet that for pretty much every other example you can construct that I could do it faster from a command-line shell. (For example in the above case if you just want three random files, you can just do something like "ls -1 | head -n3 | xargs -i mv '{}' dest/")

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Andybaby

its 2008, no one seriously has used command line in over 15 years for anything of importance on a day to day operation

I was about to rant on this, but it seems this has been done already.

Bottom line, the command line is very much still in use (and on a day-to-day basis!).

[tompe]

Originally Posted by kacir

Yes I do use an editor that features a command line. Incredibly powerfull one. Called Vim.
Just look at the example I posted in a thread a few days ago
----------------------
You can write a command in Vim saying
"find every line NOT ending with dot, question mark, exclamation point or closing quote, optionally followed by a space character and join it with the next line"
:vglobal/[.!?"']\s*$/join
I often abbreviate the above command this way:
:v/[.!?"']\s*$/j
That is it.

Religious war on: Everybody nows that Emacs is the best and most powerful editor

[Nate the great]

Oh no. Not another vim-emacs war.

Don't you guys realize that Microsoft is going to gather the body parts you sever, reanimate them, and hire the creature as a Linux developer? Do you really want to help MS?

How else did you think MS got its Linux people?

[Valloric]

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Oh no. Not another vim-emacs war.

Agreed. The Church of Emacs vs. Cult of vi is unproductive.

Originally Posted by Nate the great

Don't you guys realize that Microsoft is going to gather the body parts you sever, reanimate them, and hire the creature as a Linux developer? Do you really want to help MS?

How else did you think MS got its Linux people?

... yet you support MS bashing? It's at least as unproductive as editor warring.

Can we get off the "Microsoft is evil" bandwagon?

[Nate the great]

Originally Posted by Valloric

Agreed. The Church of Emacs vs. Cult of vi is unproductive.



... yet you support MS bashing? It's at least as unproductive as editor warring.

Can we get off the "Microsoft is evil" bandwagon?

I use, support, and recommend MS Windows. I have earned the privilege of bashing MS.


And besides, it was a joke.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by tompe

Religious war on: Everybody nows that Emacs is the best and most powerful editor

By the way: Emacs features very fancy Command line as well ;-)

I started to look for a better editor that supports really advanced and complicated Regular Expression Stuff after I had a strong disagreement with the support team for TextPad. I was trying to submit a bugreport about their Regular Expressions Engine.

I tried and tested numerous editors and finally I ended up using Emacs.
For continuation of my story read on ....

<religious war mode>

You do hot have to tell me about Emacs.
I spent several years trying to tame his evil cousin - the XEmacs (by the way, MUCH better reincarnation of Emacs )
My dotemacs file had many kilobytes, and yet I was still tinkering with it, trying to change the default behavior <rant mode> You need an ugly hack several hundred lines long just to use numpad keys, because The Emacs God - RMS tells us that the top row numbers are much quicker. He does not know that in my language those keys are used for entering "funny" non-english characters </rant mode>
I had installed numerous modes and addons. I use calc mode to this very day if I need to do some fancy computations. (Yes I still use Emacs occasionally - just not for working with text files )
Have you ever tried the Dismal mode? Brilliant.

One day I was trying to persuade one of our programmers (that works in Vim all day long creating C programs under QNX) to start using Emacs. So I have organized The Great Showoff Event. I have installed the Vim on my computer immediately after that, and a couple of days later I was much more effective using Vim that I was ever using [x]Emacs.

</religious war mode>

A few weeks later I was using Vim to generate complicated Autocad drawings for design of Industrial automnation (PLC wiring schemes) by editing a bunch of DXF files. I was using Vim macros generated by other vim macros from signal tables.

[tompe]

Dismal mode looked interesting. I use calc nearly daily. It is my calculator at the computer. I read my mails using gnus and move my setup using screen (menues in emacs is not fo me). The emacs key bindings is so hardcoded in my fingers/brain so it would not be possible to change to something else.

Concerning search in ordinary GUI program. What usually is missing is incremental search and it drives me crazy when an editor does not have it. To my surprise I noticed that firefox have it so maybe the situation have become better in other editors also.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I use command-line tools every day. For many internet tools it's by far the most convenient way of doing things. Would you really use a GUI for things like "ping", "tracert", etc?

Also, doing xcopy is much faster than using Explorer. So is doing bulk renames and such. The command line certainly has its place. You certainly can't call yourself a power users unless you know how to use the cmd shell. Extra bonus points for knowing how to use powershell, guru status if you can write bash scripts.

BOb

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by llasram

But I can see how someone who's only used the Windows command shell might think that -- it has almost no history support, rudimentary completion of filenames only, and completely counter-intuitive interaction with the windowing environment.

That is why I use console2. Also, some people use Cygwin... but it just seems to slow. There are though win32 native replacements for many of the popular unix CLI commans.

BOb