On 6/11/2013 10:33 AM, Gerhard Postpischil wrote:
On 11/5/2013 7:26 PM, David Crayford wrote:
I don't think it's perceived as boring, certainly it's perceived as user
hostile. Take Pauls cp command example, it's easy to copy files
using a simple command. For those that prefer GUIs they can drag and
drop or copy/paste. On the mainframe one has no choice but
to run JCL. JCL certainly is an antique, and a very unpleasant one.
IIRC, IBM has had a simple COPY command ever since TSO/E - no JCL
needed. JCL is unpleasant only if you're not used to it; I've run on
Univac, Unisys, CDC, and other systems, and found JCL to be a good
compromise of simplicity and power.
I've been using JCL for over 25 years and I still find it unpleasant! In
the early 90s I was introduced to AS/400s which had a very nice language
called CL. It was light years ahead of JCL and a pleasure
to use. Yet again, it comes back to antiquity. JCL was invented for
OS/360 and were stuck with it. IIRC, Fred Brooks described JCL as the
"worst programming language ever designed" and lamented the fact that it
happened on his shift.
And I find "cp" terribly confusing - to a neophyte does it stand for
copy, or compare, or compress (as in disk reorganization). It might
make more sense if I could assign an alias of COPY to it.
Yes, those Unix commands a very terse. They could of at least stuck a y
on the end :)
Gerhard Postpischil
Bradford, Vermont
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