Baslinux mailing list

[Lee Forrest <lforrestster AT gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:37:45PM +1030, Greg Mayman wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:44:29 +0000, Lee Forrest wrote:
> 

[ referring to mc ]

> > It's a great file browser, but when you cd to another directory,
> > and exit, you are still in the directory you started in.
> 
> So why should I exit?

In order to have unrestricted access to the commandline/shell in
the directory you are working in with mc if it's not the same one
you started mc in.

One of the things that turned me off to mc is the fact that my
aliases can't be used with it, either at the internal commandline
or with the shell that Ctrl-o takes you to.

Anyone who runs linux from the commandline makes extensive use of
aliases and to be denied them is crippling.

(I have a whole page of them in a seperate file sourced in my
/etc/profile.)

Furthermore, aliases are often set in the shell's default
configuration, and it's a serious drag to find that ls, for
example, doesn't return the same output with the file manager as
it does from the real commandline.

I am guessing that DOS doesn't have aliases, so you have never
noticed this problem.

All file manager-browsers have limitations of some kind, and
not being able to exit the utility and find yourself _in_ the
directory you are viewing is another serious design flaw.

It should also set the OLDPWD environment variable before it exits,
to your starting directory, so that you can return there with:

-------------
cd -
-------------

But most file manager-browsers (they are really mini-desktop
environments) try to do _everything_, and thus do not facilitate
smoothly switching back and forth between the raw shell and
themselves or internal access to the shell's full capabilities.

Because they are (theoretically) rendered obsolete by the file
manager-browser itself.

Which is why I don't use them.

GIT (GNU Interactive Tools) is an abbreviated mc (also uses
ncurses) that would be much more in the spirit of BL, but it has
the above-described deficiencies too.

[delete]

Lee

-- 
BasicLinux: Small is Beautiful
http://www.basiclinux.com.ru