Making the Command-Line Friendlier (DOS-Background)

[Veli-Pekka Tätilä]

Hi list,
Are there any tweaks or config files that would make a DOS old-timer feel at 
home in the Linux command-line? Which shell would you recommend? I've 
determined that much that I'd like to, the Gnome accessibility isn't quite 
as rosy as I thought, so I'd better stay in the command-line for a while. 
However I seem to dislike the defaults a whole lot. LS output is very speech 
unfriendly, silence on success feels disconcerting, having to specify that 
you want a confirmation appears to negate its whole point and even the 
switches are all wrong by default. Ideally I want a friendly, interactive 
command-line experience and don't mind typing in longer names if they are 
more mnemonic and or discoverable. Speaking the users language wouldn't be 
bad either. e.g:

cp: cannot stat `foo': No such file or directory

Hmm and what do we gain by knowing that a stat system call is used? All the 
user cares about is that the source file could not be found.

So are there bash configs and or other scripts for making the environment 
more DOS-like in a good way. That is more hand holding, confirmation 
prompts, verbose command output and a general attitude of not assuming you 
are a programmer and know what you are doing. I have to dabble as root a 
little, and that's scary when I don't know exactly how the shell will deal 
with wild cards or quoting, for example. Needless to say the behavior is 
quite different from DOS and Win XP to whose odd behaviors and quirks I've 
gotten used to over the years.

I guess this tweak would be just a list of shell aliases basically with -r 
recursive and -i interactive switches turned on for quite a number of 
commands. Aliases to DOS names and assuming the current directory is in the 
path would ease my transformation as well.

Any analogies or references you can draw to good old MS-DOS and or Perl 
programming might help me get some of the concepts quicker. I really like 
Perl, for quick and dirty jobs, but seem to have an immense dislike for most 
non-interactive Unix command-line apps and shells. Maybe this is just 
culture shock and initial change resistance. in particular, SunOS 5 and TCSH 
as used in our Uni machine is just plain terrible. e.g:

grep: illegal option -- help
Usage: grep -hblcnsviw pattern file . . .

Really helpful. Compare to findstr /? which gives you much more info 
including what the command actually does.

PS: Having learned Perl in WIndows before trying to use Linux, I often feel 
like hey the shell or editor works like Perl, rather than the other way 
around, <grin>.

-- 
With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila at mail.student.oulu.fi)
Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/