Re: Emacs vista build failures

[David Kastrup]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: David Kastrup <address@hidden>
>> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden
>> Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:24:38 +0200
>> 
>> Yes, since COMMAND.COM and CMD.EXE behave quite differently, and also
>> differently on different versions of Windows.
>
> And zsh behaves differently from Bash which behaves differently from
> the Borne shell.

Not in the basic Bourne shell features.  There _are_ buggy Bourne shells
around.  But they still don't show that sort of variety that Microsoft
manages in its own product line.

>> So tell me: How to you quote the word (written as Lisp string) 
>> "\"goof\" " to the typical Windows shell?
>
> See the Emacs makefiles for Windows.

They don't quote such words.  So care to enlighted me?

>> When looking at design and implementation of first DOS and later
>> Windows, I often had the feeling "this is so stupid and braindead
>> that I can hardly believe it".  With UNIX, the feeling was more often
>> "I wish I would have thought of that".
>
> Are you sure you know the design and implementation of DOS and Windows
> well enough to say this?

I have worked with DOS beginning with version 1.0 when they were still
mainly working with FCBs rather than file descriptors, and I have worked
with CP/M, and I have worked with UNIX on various processors and OS/2.
I have done quite a bit of assembly and system programming in all of
those systems (many of that for pay), so I know a lot of the inheritage,
memory and system layouts, and I know a lot of the implementations, and
what system calls were done with what sort of data structures when what
sort of features were implemented imitating features from elsewhere.

So yes, I am sure that I know design and implementation of DOS and
Windows well enough to say what feelings I have.  And actually, I think
that I should not require all too much of a qualification to be allowed
to state my feelings.

-- 
David Kastrup