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DOS as a 'proper shell' is missing the point. BASIC as a shell was more capable than DOS. There is no reason to have DOS instead of BASIC other than it has few
by crististm 6y ago
DOS as a 'proper shell' is missing the point.
BASIC as a shell was more capable than DOS. There is no reason to have DOS instead of BASIC other than it has fewer features to be implemented.
For all the bashing BASIC gets for favoring unstructured programming, you could do a lot in it as a first gear programming language. Think of the amount of bash scripts that shuffle strings around and ask if you would not rather program in e.g. python if it gave immediate access to files.
- indymike 6y agoFirst, it's cool that someone is trying to make a BASIC shell. What I was pointing to is that most same-era computers used BASIC as their shell.
- crististm 6y agoThe most non-sh shell I've seen in recent >10years is scsh which is a scheme shell. I don't know if anyone is working on a Basic shell today and you're right about your observation. As a programming language, Basic was more suited to be a shell than DOS was suited to be a programming language. :) that's probably why I avoided learning dos batch programming like mad.