#: 18984 S12/OS9/68000 (OSK)
    02-Oct-93  20:54:02
Sb: #More New Shell
Fm: John Strong 72270,1555
To: Steve Wegert

Thanks to all of you who have commentted on the Forker Project. The response
has been just about what I expected with comments generally fitting in one of
the following groups:

  1. I/we have Unix type shells, no new shell is needed.
  2. Way cool.
  3. Be sure forker has this feature ....

I intentionally left out some of Forker's planned features from the
announcement to find out how important the features were.  I also assummed the
reference to SHELL+ would tell most OS9ers that Forker will be feature laden
and not just a clone of the Microware shell; most who responded to the Forker
Project announcement seemed to understand this, however one very vocal oppenent
(let's call him VVO) of the project apparently did not.  VVO simply 'flamed'
everything about the project including my choice of programming language.

I do my best work in assembler, it is easier for me to work with than 'C', now
I know that's not true for most programmers.  Forker is currently only 4066
bytes long, however is is still a long way from being finished.  In the
following list the commands without a dash in front of them are working.

Forker's internal commands:
   chd or cd  change data directory
   chx or cx  change execution directory
   err        print long error message -  ex         execute program as overlay
   hlp        provide Help on utilities
   kill       abort a process -  logout     terminate current Shell -  lst  
list the contents of a file
   md         make a directory
   mxd        make a directory (exec) -  profile
   prtenv     print enviroment variables
   rm         remove a file or directory
   rmx        remove a file or directory (exec)
   send       send a signal
   set        set Shell options -  setenv     set enviroment variables
   setpr      set process priority -  unsetenv   clears enviroment variable
   w          wait for process to finish
   wait       wait for child processes to finish

When Forker is finished, it will probably be smaller than 20k compare this to
BASH's 200+K.  Do we need Forker, I think some of us do.

 John R. Strong
 StrongWare


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