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Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn

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On 2025-11-15 23:35, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
> On 15 Nov 2025 10:34:40 GMT, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> 
>> Another one is that if you try to remove hundreds or thousands of
>> files, I don't believe anyone would look carefully at each one of
>> them. The confirmation time would be a very bad useless experience:
>> it would take ages to do something without any increased security.
> 
> The term for that is “confirmation fatigue”. Familiar to GUI users who
> have seen one too many of those “Are you sure?” dialogs that keep popping
> up.
> 
>> Another valid point is if you are using it in a shell script running
>> in a cron job. Well good luck with that.
> 
> I used to use VMS, back in the day. That had the concept of version
> numbers in files. E.g. you could have files with names like
> 
>      FRED.DAT;1
>      FRED.DAT;2
>      FRED.DAT;3

I remember that.

A short time after knowing this I bought my first computer, an Amstrad 
1512 DD, and I was sad to learn that Dos did not have this feature.


> all existing within the same directory at the same time. Some users
> naïvely relied on this as a backup feature, and then were rudely
> disillusioned the first time they (or someone else) ran a PURGE command on
> that directory.

The uni lab where I was learning Pascal using their Vax had limited 
versions to maybe two or three. At least for us students.


> But anyway, version numbers were optional in most commands; when
> specifying an input file, omitting the version number meant that the
> highest-numbered version was automatically chosen. So for example
> 
>      TYPE FRED.DAT
> 
> would show you the contents of the highest-numbered version. So really,
> you could simply ignore the whole version-numbering system for most of
> your working day.
> 
> True for most commands, but not DELETE. For safety, that wanted to see at
> least the trailing semicolon, even if there was no actual number after it.
> E.g.
> 
>      DELETE FRED.DAT
> 
> would fail with a “version number required” error, while
> 
>      DELETE FRED.DAT;
> 
> would delete the newest version.

Ah, I don't remember this :-)

> 
> This special case for the DELETE command was, I thought, a much better
> option than requiring confirmation. It was a subtle difference -- one that
> required a slightly different path through your muscle memory for this one
> command. Not overtly intrusive, but hopefully enough to prevent you from
> mistaking the dangerous command for an innocuous one ...


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.
ES🇪🇸, EU🇪🇺;

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Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-11-14 19:11 +0000
  Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-11-14 19:43 +0000
    Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-14 20:11 +0000
  Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-11-15 10:34 +0000
    Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-15 22:35 +0000
      Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-11-17 13:00 +0100
        Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2025-11-17 12:01 -0500
        Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-18 01:06 +0000
          Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-11-18 07:25 +0100
            Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-18 07:20 +0000
              Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-11-18 08:49 +0100
                Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-11-18 08:11 +0000
                Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> - 2025-11-18 17:46 +0100
  Re: The First 8 Commands Every New User Should Learn Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2025-11-15 14:03 +0200

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