[indiana-discuss] FAM-2 ( was Re: Indiana Problem Statement )

[Peter Tribble]

On 7/2/07, Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at sun.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2007-07-02 at 19:04 +0100, Peter Tribble wrote:
> >> On 7/2/07, Tim Foster <Tim.Foster at sun.com> wrote:
> > > timf at haiiro[884] top
> > > The command "top" has is unavailable or has different
> > > syntax in OpenSolaris.
> > > You might want to use the following instead -
> > > Example: prstat 1
>
> > I regard the aim as being to provide a useful and user-friendly
> > environment, not to explicitly advertise to the user how
> > deficient and user-hostile Solaris is.
>
> Okay, what's the alternative ? Given < 6 months, should we
>
> a) have a mechanism similar to the above
> b) leave users completely in the dark
> c) something else ?
>
> I'd vote for a) or c) but I'm all ears ?

I vote for c). Fix it. You don't have to do any real work to
ship top, for instance. For many commands it's a personality
thing that can be addressed with the PATH. For something
like ps you could use what I've had as my ps for over a
decade:

#!/bin/sh
case $# in
0)
	exec /usr/ucb/ps
	;;
esac
case $1 in
-*)
	exec /usr/bin/ps $*
	;;
*)
	exec /usr/ucb/ps $*
	;;
esac

(We could argue for hours about the default behaviour in the
no-argument case...)

-- 
-Peter Tribble
http://www.petertribble.co.uk/ - http://ptribble.blogspot.com/