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Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id XAA20012 for freebsd-chat-outgoing; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 23:28:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from mail.camalott.com (mail.camalott.com [208.203.140.2]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id XAA19952 for <freebsd-chat@freebsd.org>; Fri, 28 Aug 1998 23:28:01 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from joelh@gnu.org) Received: from detlev.UUCP (tex-99.camalott.com [208.229.74.99]) by mail.camalott.com (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id BAA12366; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 01:28:50 -0500 Received: (from joelh@localhost) by detlev.UUCP (8.9.1/8.9.1) id BAA01517; Sat, 29 Aug 1998 01:27:01 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from joelh) Date: Sat, 29 Aug 1998 01:27:01 -0500 (CDT) Message-Id: <199808290627.BAA01517@detlev.UUCP> To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: It's easier to port a shell than a shell script. -- Larry Wall From: Joel Ray Holveck <joelh@gnu.org> Reply-to: joelh@gnu.org Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org

Forwarded-by: "Joel Ray Holveck" <joelh@gnu.org> Forwarded-by: "Joel N. Weber II" <devnull@gnu.org> Forwarded-by: nev@bostic.com Forwarded-by: "Kevin D. Clark" <kclark@cabletron.com> Forwarded-by: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader" <hall@zk3.dec.com>

I've been attending the USENIX NT and LISA NT (Large Installation Systems Administration for NT) conference in downtown Seattle this week.

One of those magical Microsoft moments(tm) happened yesterday and I thought that I'd share. Non-geeks may not find this funny at all, but those in geekdom (particularly UNIX geekdom) will appreciate it.

Greg Sullivan, a Microsoft product manager (henceforth MPM), was holding forth on a forthcoming product that will provide Unix style scripting and shell services on NT for compatibility and to leverage UNIX expertise that moves to the NT platform. The product suite includes the MKS (Mortise Kern Systems) windowing Korn shell, a windowing PERL, and lots of goodies like awk, sed and grep. It actually fills a nice niche for which other products (like the MKS suite) have either been too highly priced or not well enough integrated.

An older man, probably mid-50s, stands up in the back of the room and asserts that Microsoft could have done better with their choice of Korn shell. He asks if they had considered others that are more compatible with existing UNIX versions of KSH.

The MPM said that the MKS shell was pretty compatible and should be able to run all UNIX scripts.

The questioner again asserted that the MKS shell was not very compatible and didn't do a lot of things right that are defined in the KSH language spec.

The MPM asserted again that the shell was pretty compatible and should work quite well.

This assertion and counter assertion went back and forth for a bit, when another fellow member of the audience announced to the MPM that the questioner was, in fact David Korn of AT&T (now Lucent) Bell Labs. (David Korn is the author of the Korn shell)

Uproarious laughter burst forth from the audience, and it was one of the only times that I have seen a (by then pink cheeked) MPM lost for words or momentarily lacking the usual unflappable confidence. So, what's a body to do when Microsoft reality collides with everyone elses?

---Lisa

-- Joel Ray Holveck - joelh@gnu.org - http://www.wp.com/piquan Fourth law of programming: Anything that can go wrong wi sendmail: segmentation violation - core dumped

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