Rant

[der.hans]

Am 09. Oct, 2001 schwätzte Lucas Vogel so:

> I know you're saying this in good fun, but how is bash such a great file
> manager? I love CLI as much as the next guy does(to a point at least), am I
> just not as familar with its secrets or something?

What does a filemanager do? Manage files? No. It can boss them around a bit,
but they're just fine without it doing anything.

The filesystem is the organization. A file manager is a filing clerk.

A CLI offers access to those same clerk functions. Granted it's not all in
the shell, but the shell is where the CLI resides :).

Generally, I'm much faster using CLI with file completion than I am aiming
at files via a GUI filemanager. There are times when the GUI is more
comfortable, but shell tricks are more fun.

An example where shell kicks GUI butt is my ogg files. I've got a script
that roams out and finds all of my off files, then builds an m3u file and
puts it in place. Another script rips out nasty stuff that might've made it
to my hard drive. xmms then loads that list.

To do that with a GUI I'd have to visit hundreds of directories, tell xmms
to grab all the songs in them and then go back in and find the ones I want
removed and drop them.

Oh, and it needs to do that on a remote machine where my song repository is.

Also "su -c /etc/init.d/service restart->root's passwd" is much faster
than "my box->drop box->/->etc->service->right click->*(&(*#@#$ dialog
box->restart->&#$#%$#@ dialog box->root's passwd" :).

When traversing unknown filesystems or wanting to choose a bunch of files
not sharing a common patter, then GUIs can be quite nice. A good example is
pulling in just a few songs to xmms, if they're in almost the same location.

IMHO and all that :).

ciao,

der.hans
-- 
# der.hans@LuftHans.com home.pages.de/~lufthans/ www.DevelopOnline.com
#  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
#  I took the one less traveled by,
#  And that has made all the difference. -- Robert Frost
#  I, OTOH, prefer to just go stomping through the desert... - der.hans