Here I go again. (*another* shell - rc!)
Jim Winstead Jr.
root floppy with ash, a few people made happy sounds about a shell
called 'rc' in my direction. Now that the root floppy (0.95a) is out,
and I have a little more time on my hands (after that corrupted
rootimage fiasco - sorry again!), I decided to track down a copy of
'rc' and see what was so swell about it.
I'm really impressed with 'rc', especially with either the GNU
readline library (which adds a bit of weight, but makes it as nice to
use as bash at 1/3 the weight), or with the smaller GNU-readline like
library included with rc-1.3beta (not quite as nice as readline, but
saves a fair amount of baggage.)
I'm going to run 'rc' through the hoops for a while on my system, and
will upload binaries to tsx-11 by the end of the week, probably with a
readline and an editline version. For those that can't wait - compile
it yourself, it was absolutely painless. (It's available on
archone.tamu.edu in /pub/rc.)
As you might have guessed, I'm also debating whether or not 'rc' might
find it's way onto the root floppy. It would be nice, since it is
about a billion times better for interactive use than 'ash', but it
also means stepping into that fuzzy area of breaking a rather solid
tradition.
For those that are curious, rc weighs in at about 70k with the
editline library, and closer to 100k with the GNU readline library.
This drops dramatically with shared libraries, too. (Down to about
50k for the GNU readline version, if I remember right.)
Very few programs have impressed me as much as 'rc' has in the last
few hours, and I've barely even scratched the surface of it's
capabilities. If the rest of Plan 9 is this nice, someone should beat
up AT&T and force them to release it to the general public....
Also, a quick update on finding a small editor for the root-disk:
People have suggested 'joe', which I remember hearing about
before, but where can I get the latest version? Archie only
turns up earlier versions (I know Linux-support is in the
official version, because I remember seeing the announcement.)
I took a look at 'ae', a small editor which has it's roots in
that wonderful hard-to-read C code contest (yeah, must be
rough), but it can't handle the arrow keys out of the box, and
I don't really want to try and add them in.
I've got the fptedit posted to alt.sources today, but I
haven't had a chance to look at it or try and compile it.
I've been playing with 'rc' too much. :)
--
Jim Winstead Jr. (CSci '95) | "Catch a fish!"
Harvey Mudd College | -Geddy Lee,
jwin...@jarthur.Claremont.EDU | San Diego Sports Arena
Disclaimer: Mine, not theirs! | January 20, 1992