Tim wrote:
But that's not it, is it? It's far more than typing in a command.
Typing ls, or mv, doesn't get me anywhere. I have to cd to where the
files are, probably do mkdir a few times with a cd or two thrown in.
I've got to come up with a sane wildcard to move a collection of files,
or individually list a slew of files with no commonalities between them,
type in paths to move them too, ad infinitum.
Les Mikesell:
But, but, but... Having a slew of files with no commonalities doesn't
just happen by itself.
Ooooh yes it does (panto voice)... You don't get a say in the naming of
some things, not every file is one that you've created yourself. Even
when you do have control, you may not want to similarly name two (or
more) files that *may* get used together in something else.
I can't think of anything on my computer other than the OS distribution
where I did not have the choice of the directory where it was stored,
but in those cases you probably also can't decide by seeing the name in
a GUI view what the files do have in common or why you'd pick some of
them for a certain operation. You'd probably need to let grep or find
generate a list for you based on something in the files contents or
attributes. And then xargs will run a command on each one in the list
for you.
The fact that Linux has crap GUI file tools, in general, doesn't make
the CLI superior in itself.
What's the problem with opening several nautilus windows,
control-clicking a bunch of files in one window and dragging to one of
the others?
It has little more than browsing features (drag and drop, copy and
paste). If you want to actually manage things, you've got to add in
features all over the place, and put up with the awful un-user-friendly
right-click menu/properties technique, or resort to using another
program, as well. Nautilus is not quick, nor does it make it easy to do
many file managing tasks (rename, chmod, chown, pattern select, etc.).
"GUIs normally make it simple to accomplish simple actions and
impossible to accomplish complex actions." --Doug Gwyn (22/Jun/91 in
comp.unix.wizards) This has not changed - and probably can't.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
