Steve Litt <slitt@???> wrote:

> This is one reason why, in shellscripts, you
> need to quote almost all variables: So they act correctly with the
> space laden filenames that windows dwoobydogs just love to create.

Not just Windows users. I regularly use spaces in file names.

There’s an argument that computers should be tools, not slavemasters.
I’m sure you’ll remember going back a few decades how interacting with computers meant that the human had to learn how to deal with the computer’s way of doing things. So, for example, typically when writing a document you had an edit mode from which you couldn’t print, and a print mode (menu) from which you couldn’t edit - you could not simply write you document and when ready just tell the computer to print it.

I recall a lot of resistance when Apple brought out the Mac and suddenly programmers had to learn how to write programs that did what the user wanted - when the user wanted. So, for example, open an editor, write your document, and whenever you want - hit Cmd-P (or choose Print from the File menu) and it gets printed, right there from inside your “edit mode”.
And now most people stuff like that for granted. rings have shifted from the user doing the work to make the computer side easy to the user expecting the computer side to do the work - after all, isn’t the purpose of computer to do “stuff” for us ?

Similarly with file names. Once upon a time the human had to adapt to what the computer supported - such as fitting your entire file name into 8 characters. Now the computer (mostly) supports what is natural for a human - and that includes using spaces in their writing. After_all_it_does_seem_a_bit_un-natural_not_being_allowed_to_use_spaces_in_your_writing_-_it_would_make_a_hard_to_read_book_!



Another OT anecdote. This talk of spaces and quoting reminds me of an issue I had to deal with a couple of work hats ago. I had some users who would struggle sometimes to log into their terminals on the SCO OpenServer system. When I watched them carefully, I’d see them mistyping either their username or password, so for example assume their username is “username”, they might mistype it thus : “userm<left key>name” rather than “userm<backspace>name”. Because it looked OK on the screen, it was hard to persuade them that what the system saw them type was “userm<left key>name” and not the “username” they could clearly see on the screen.


Simon