[bind10-dev] command line syntax for bind10

[Ronny H. Kavli]

On Tue, 2009-11-24 at 07:57 -0600, Michael Graff wrote:
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> I would rather not see a use case of "must feel like DCL" but I would
> love to have a list of the good things DCL did, and why we should do them.

Having much of the same background as Paul, I share his general view.

First of all, DCL is all about consistency.
If you have learned one command, it's very easy to predict which options
and parameters are available for other commands to get to a desired
result.

For example: To get information about just about anything you issue
SHOW, no matter what. To set a parameter you issue SET, no matter what.
If you're lost issue HELP SET and you'll get the options SET takes.

Then comes the command arguments and modifiers which are always supplied
in a consistent way.

For instance if you want the command to be verbose, supply /log, etc.
Additionally, if you want to avoid COBOL-fingers, both commands and its
arguments can be abbreviated to its non-ambiguous part. So for instance,
instead of writing "SET DEFAULT sys$login", one can save a whopping four
keystrokes by writing "SET DEF sys$login" to change to the home
directory.

It's really hard to communicate why this is the best thing since sliced
bread without logging some time with DCL, but feel free to explore a bit
more how the NCL subsystem works:

 http://h71000.www7.hp.com/doc/73final/6499/6499pro_021.html

Regards,

 -- Ronny H. Kavli