On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:55:19 -0400, Yigal Chripun <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 08/04/2009 14:34, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
My experience with WMI is that it is buggy and very slow, not to mention
really complicated. I would hate to rely on it for scripting. On the
other hand, having everything as a file allows me to use all existing
file processing tools to deal with anything on a UNIX system. The file
API is simple and doesn't require me to look at an object spec to do
simple tasks.
well, WMI is supposed to be replaced and enhanced by powershell. So you
should check that out.
I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that
MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything
is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API.
Sure it does, open, read, select, etc. The API is all the same. So you
can use standard tools to work with all files, even dynamically generated
ones.
Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line
arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond
trivial use cases.
how is this different from some powershell set of commands? I think you
are confusing the parameters for running tools with the API for system
objects.
If I don't know how to use a command to do what I want, I first try cmd
--help, then man cmd if that doesn't show what I need. I'm sure it's not
much different than powershell commands.
At my work, we program in a *nix environment (Solaris) and I also use
Linux extensively So I know my way on *nix systems but I simply cannot
remember all the different argument for each util. every time I need to
find a file I need to ask a co-worker how to use "find". So in my
experience there's nothing simple and uniform about unix tools and I use
those constantly at work.
Again, you are confusing tool usage with OS object API. Do you actually
use powershell? Do you find that it's objects or tools beam their usage
directly into your brain or do you have to look up a manual to see how it
works? Maybe you don't have to ask your coworkers about powershell
objects because *nobody uses it*.
given that both options suck - I'd prefer dealing with objects rather
than raw files that need to be parsed.
i.e. someDir.list() which returns an array of files is better than using
ls on unix.
The question is not whether you want to deal with that, it's whether other
tools deal with that. Since the interface between tools is well defined
on unix (file descriptors), all tools can be made to work with eachother.
If some powershell object expects an array of File objects, but your
directory tool is outputting an array of strings, you're SOL (this
probably isn't the case, but I'm sure some more obscure objects suffer
from this). Since most unix tools treat input data as whitespace/newline
delineated tokens, you only need to deal with rare special cases. Most of
the time, they just work together without any effort.
Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file"
which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.
The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut. Your opinion varies from
90% of people who actually use scripts. New technology for the sake of
being new isn't better.
Was Colombus wrong when he said the world is round and 99.9% of people
told him he's a fool?
Sure, but I'm sure he felt like one when he found out America wasn't India
:)
This is a rediculous point. You ain't Chris Columbus, and you're not
saying anything radical here, just ignorant.
My opinion is that there where better OS designs in the _60s_ than what
we use today. "everything is a file" is a complete failure.
Yes, I pity all those poor helpless Unix script writers who can't seem to
accomplish anything. "If only things were objects instead of files" I
always hear them say. What a load of crap.
therefore, trying to do the unix way on windows with BAT files is
simply the wrong way. it doesn't work because it is not designed to
work like that.
my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its
own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX
and all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's
"everything is a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot
of ignorance.
It's not crap, just not as good. It's a poor replacement for the
"Everything is the same" design. Having everything use the same API has
huge advantages in modularity. One of my hugest pet peeves with Windows
is that it has several different APIs for I/O objects, and ony sockets
support the select interface. I have no idea what Windows devs were
smoking when they decided not to allow select on any object. Making
efficient I/O driven apps that use more than just sockets is really
difficult.
see above, MS got the it wrong. are you surprised? I'm not.
No, definitely not surprised. MS always seems to make things more
complicated for the sake of, well I have no idea why.
-Steve
