>IIRC, IBM has had a simple COPY command ever since TSO/E - no JCL >needed. JCL is unpleasant only if you're not used to it; I've run on >Univac, Unisys, CDC, and other systems, and found JCL to be a good >compromise of simplicity and power. > >And I find "cp" terribly confusing - to a neophyte does it stand for >copy, or compare, or compress (as in disk reorganization). It might make >more sense if I could assign an alias of COPY to it.
I have been around a long time. Retired 10 years and the first "mainframe" I touched had tubes in it. (Bouroughs 220) A historical note for Gerhard and others who wonder about the cryptic commands in Unix (and derivatives). It was largely because of what was available as interactive terminals at the time. Sloooooow TTYs. 60 to 100 chars per minute. Note: Thats per minute, not per second. So commands were as short as possible. "cp" is half as many chars as "copy". On the "mass" storage of the time (i.e. paper tape), "copy" would have been twice as long (both on the tape and the sending time). -- Rich Greenberg Sarasota, FL, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 941 378 2097 Eastern time. N6LRT I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines: Val,Red,Shasta,Zero,Casey & Cinnar (At the bridge) Owner:Chinook-L Canines: Red & Max (Siberians) Retired at the beach Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
