On Tuesday 27 November 2001 16:36, Ted Harding wrote:
Would someone from SuSE please explain what the point of this particular alias is?
Yeah...
Since 'which' is there in its own right, why steal its name for something else?
Strikes me as odd... (Still) Being the relative newcomer to both Linux and SuSE, I tend to agree with Ted here... One of the things that I really appreciate with linux is it's apparent consistency... it's one of the things that eventually drove me off of MS's platforms... (Windows inconsistencies, that is) - Now I regularly use 'which' to find programs/scripts, and although I haven't needed it yet, on this machine (just got it, freshly installed with 7.3, flawlessy, I might add. Kudos to SuSE for the installer -it's great! :) I *would* eventually need 'which', and be baffled as to why it was behaving differently than what I'm used to. IMHO aliasing stuff to already established commands/functions/progs/whatever is *not* a great idea... I think that at least *some* warning about stuff like that would be in order, e.g. "which --help" could produce something like "type: usage: type [-apt] name [name ...] which has been aliased to 'type -p' -to use (the old) which enter: /usr/bin/which" or something... man type gets me the manpage for bash... this is even more confusing... I know from "type type", that type is a shell builtin, but this manpage is >5000 lines, and I'm really no closer to understanding what type *does* :P -now I *like* which, and I would like it back... so I looked around a bit and found out where these aliases are set up: /etc/bash.bashrc The first couple lines state: # PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE /etc/bash.bashrc There are chances that your changes # will be lost during system upgrades. so what do I do? Just edit anyway, and try to remember this next time I upgrade? or is there some other place where this may be done without above "risk"?
Inspired by Alexandr's note above, I did 'alias' (on 7.2), with the following results:
<snip>
Which also suggests that it would be more to the point to have commands (aliases or command files) "A:", "C:" etc, where "A:" would do "mount /A: ; cd /A:", while "C:" would do "cd /C: and, if "/A:" mounted, unmount it." That would actually be _useful_, instead of the really pointless sneering at "ignorant DOS users" which the above aliases generate
good point...
there IS a point in having UNIX commands which emulate such DOS commands as are relevant to UNIX).
I agree...
useful: "alias unmount='umount'" (it's a common enough typo;
Dear SuSE: Please stop doing this silly stuff.
yeah... ;)
As it happens, I had not done a "which ls" and hadn't noticed this. However, if I had, I would have had the same initial reaction: that something was wrong; and it might have taken me quite a bit of time and trouble to track it down (it doesn't immediately leap to the mind, even of an experienced user, that a command which doesn't do what it's supposed to do might actually be an alias instead).
Very true. I know that *I'd* have been completely lost...
It's totally unnecessary to alias an existing command to something quite different. Commands are commands. If nothing else, "man which" gives false information; new users getting used to UNIX will only get confused and deterred.
Which I feel is a *very* important point. I've been "using" SuSE since 6.2, and I am finally getting to the point where I have *some* confidence in what I'm doing... Changes like these make it *much* harder for people on my 'level' understand and learn...
Frankly, I expect commands to do what they're "officially" supposed to do,
Which is probably what 'converts' from other distros would, as well... what's the point in trying to adhere to the FSH if not to make life easier for people using several different distros...? My point here being that the command 'which' would probably be a very much used command for a while, if I were to suddenly find myself at a RH or Debian system...
All the more so if the new alias doesn't behave as "man <command>" describes.
Yep: Consistency, please...
And, as for DOS users: Please don't treat them like low life.
Patronizing attitudes don't yield 'happy campers' -another of the myriad reasons I up and left the window-littered fields of Microland, and found a new campsite...