On 2/6/2023 5:40 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
Hi,
On Mon, Feb 6, 2023 at 4:35 PM Ralf Quint <freedos...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 2/6/2023 2:03 PM, Rugxulo wrote:
Do you not understand that I see a lot of similarities between the two
OSes? Certainly they share enough for various ports of useful tools to
be made. It doesn't mean they have much in common, but I still see a
lot to learn from classic UNIX and the philosophy of some of the
authors and tools (as evidenced by my quotes from them). DOS is
"simple" (keep it simple!) but still useful (with the right tools and
the right ideas).
No, there aren't really "a lot of similarities" between DOS and
Unix/Linux.
DOS v1 was more like CP/M, but DOS v2 added file handles and
redirection. C compilers for DOS were abundant. C came from UNIX.
Well, no. For one, part of the programming API of DOS 1.xx was similar
to that of CP/M-80. But it had a totally different underlying file
system, as Paterson used the FAT filesystem that originally was inspired
by the 8 bit FAT system used by Microsoft's Standalone BASIC (which he
helped to implement at SCP) as well as Microsoft's unreleased 8-bit OS
MDOS/MIDAS, which he was shown by Marc McDonald (Microsoft employee #1).
And C was developed to have a higher level language to implement Unix
quicker "cross-platform", but while it has some features that it
inherited from that initial task, it is not a Unix specific programming
language. That is what in the end has made it so popular over a long
time. In case of DOS, this shows in the use of very DOS specific
libraries The file I/O stuff is a bit Unix like, but that's about it.
The use of (n)curses for example is a typical Unix thing, that has
nothing to do with DOS and should not be shoehorned into a DOS
application...
Some *ix utilities MIGHT be useful for the use on DOS,
MKS Toolkit? GNUish? EMX? DJGPP? Heck, even Simtel and Garbo had a few.
I said "some" utilities. Not everything plus the kitchen sink.
"The Lessons of Unix Can Be Applied Elsewhere"
Nice statement, but I think that this is wrong. And just for the record,
I used my first Unix system before I used my first DOS system...
Unix was from the start to be an abstraction of the hardware underneath,
running on different hardware, usable with minimal knowledge of the
hardware (specially, CPU wise).
DOS (as in MS-DOS/PC-DOS) is directly tied to the Intel 8086 CPU, it's
segmented memory models, it's access to an underlying BIOS (and various
extensions) on the hardware level and out of necessity, much more
reliant on direct access to the hardware underneath.
And yes, an article, possibly a series of articles, about programming on
DOS, for DOS, will be forthcoming...
Would you prefer an article on Pascal? I know you (also) are a fan of
it. An article from your experience there might be useful.
No, kind of programming language agnostic, with examples in BASIC, Turbo
Pascal, C and assembler. As mentioned, it will be about programming in
DOS for DOS.
I built and tested P5 Pascal (ISO 7185) with GPC (and GNU Make) for
DOS, Windows, and Linux.
ISO 7185 is the worst thing that could happen to Pascal. Utterly useless
and outdated by the time it was released.
Same as the standards for "minimal" and "extended" BASIC. There is not
one mainstream BASIC implementation that is really sticking to either one..
Ralf
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