Talk:Ch (computer programming)

Dubious

I've marked a number of claims in the article as dubious. The claim that Ch is used in many universities and schools appears unsupported. No one questions that it is promoted for use in teaching and that it's used in that way at some (unknown) number of institutions. But there's no evidence this can be characterized as many; the use of this characterization appears promotional.

The claims that Ch is comparable to a C shell or that, as a shell for running external commands, it supports wildcarding or iteration of external commands appear factually incorrect. Please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ch interpreter (2nd nomination). Msnicki (talk) 15:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

To put it into context, "many" would be a noticeable fraction of the thousands of academic institutions. Perhaps a few hundred would be enough to justify that term. Scaling it down to the apparent reality (several, e.g., no more than a few dozen) would be less promotional. However, without a reliable source, the statement as a whole is promotional. TEDickey (talk) 23:40, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

here, here, here and here are my findings related to many schools using Ch for teaching, plus the existing references in the articles. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.203.138.17 (talk) 22:13, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, after repeatedly asking my son what language he was using in his 8th grade computer class, he finally asked the teacher and the language is Ch. According to their web page it's available for free to schools. I was thinking of getting it for him so that he could do work at home, but it's way too expensive for that. It looks like it might be available free for the Raspberry Pi, but it is not at all clear how. 73.202.91.174 (talk)Rich

Notability tag

I'm a bit confused by the notability tag. First there are many sources that would seem to support the notability of the topic. Secondly, those sources were debated at AfD/DrV/AfD and found acceptable. Could anyone clarify? Hobit (talk) 02:52, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

There was the apparent WP:COI on the part of Chuser and various IP-addresses which created this topic. A majority of the sources provided by those editors are either the primary source (Harry Cheng) or authors who have been demonstrated to be close associates of Harry Cheng. TEDickey (talk) 08:22, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

The article needs prose which explains why the subject is notable. That means referenced content which shows why this subject is important. If more articles set out to explain such from the beginning, we wouldn't have lame wars over the deletion of articles which so not. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 21:13, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

@TEDickey: The AfD clearly found it to meet our notability guidelines. The issue of sourcing was extensively discussed and found acceptable. @thumperward: The tags in question make the claim that it doesn't meet WP:N or other notability guidelines. That is different than importance. Also, there are _plenty_ of third-party sources. I just don't see an issue. Hobit (talk) 11:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I did add the main users guide and removed the dubious tags. Hobit (talk) 11:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with removing the dubious tags. My comments supporting the tags appear in section above. The statements were not supported by the cited Campbell article, which clearly describes a C language shell that can also run commands, not a csh-style C shell in the section, "Command Shell & Shell Programming". But as an alternative to the dubious tags, I've fixed the language to match the sources. Msnicki (talk) 13:22, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Humm, reading the userguide, it looks a lot like a C shell to me. It does have wildcarding, tab completion and access to standard unix binaries (rm, ls, etc.). Apparently some of that is newer than the Campbell review (or he missed it, don't know), but the user guide supports it. That said, I don't really have a problem with your changes so... Hobit (talk) 01:56, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

It does not do wildcarding. Chuser conceded that it depends on anything it runs being able to do wildcarding, same as cmd.exe, not like any Unix shell but argued that it doesn't matter. On Unix, the utilities and the shells are different things. Adding a lot of Unix utilities (in this case, GNU utilities) to something that wasn't already a Unix shell does not make it one. Ultimately, whether something "looks like a C shell" could be a matter of personal opinion, I suppose. But the facilities for running external commands that you list (and all the rest that Ch provides) are common to almost all command processors, certainly including ALL the Unix shells, not just csh or tcsh, but sh, ksh, bash and all the rest as well, and even to cmd.exe and I don't think anyone argues they all look like the C shell, too. Personally, I think the only part that might make it look like a C shell to anyone (and only if they don't realize that the "C" in C shell is misleading) is the part that in fact doesn't look like any other shell I know of, certainly not the C shell, that in between running external commands, you can also type pure C language statements and whole C language programs, exactly as Campbell shows. Moreover, Chuser stated that he believes that when Gary Wang described it as a complete C shell in the Spectrum article, he meant it was a complete C language shell, not a csh. But as long as we can move on, I suppose that's all that matters. Cheers, Msnicki (talk) 04:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I think you know a lot more about the topic than I. I just saw that wildcarding was used in examples in the user manual, so I'd say it's supported. And yes, for us folks who use bash/tcsh/ksh fairly interchangeably, it's a lot like csh. But I do very little shell script writing. Hobit (talk) 03:51, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

What it appears to be doing is using the C library system() routine in stdlib.h to execute anything that's a command, not pure C language. On Windows, this maps to cmd.exe (and I've been able to match the behavior.) On Linux or Unix, the behavior is locally dependent on whatever has been chosen as the default shell, but usually, that's bash. This would be consistent with a claim that wildcarding works on Unix, but only because it's bash that's doing it there, and with the bash-isms in the Ch manual like 2>&1, an idiom that bash supports but csh does not. Msnicki (talk) 18:16, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It may help to explain that if you're allowed to use the system() routine, here's all it takes to create a complete command processor in C:

#include <stdio.h>

#include <stdlib.h>

int main( )

{

char command[ 256 ];

while ( gets( command ) ) system( command );

}

Msnicki (talk) 18:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

got it. I'll note the buffer overflow issue just to sound moderately educated :-). Thanks for taking the time to explain what's (probably) going on! Hobit (talk) 01:12, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy requires wp:No_original_research, we need

WP:RS. In Sriranga Veeraraghavan's article, the subtitle is "Ch is a combined C shell and IDE". is it appropriate to remove "c" from c shell? the command "ls c:/windows", "int i=5, *p", "echo $WINDIR", "getenv("WINDIR")", "`ls`", "33+344*333" works fine in ch shell. For me, C shell refers to the C language shell in the article, not csh. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.100.24.205 (talk) 00:59, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

The vendor is welcome to encourage users to call it anything they like. But here on Wikipedia, a C shell is something specific; we have a whole article describing features which Ch does not provide. Ch does provides a command line interface (by wrappering whatever came with the OS to run external commands) and qualifies as a shell, just not a C shell. I am unable to verify the subtitle and anything else in the Veeraraghavan article; it's a dead link. Msnicki (talk) 01:48, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the dead link. C shell can mean either csh or ch shell. csh shell uses a shell programming language not related to C. ch shell is more related to C and can run C expression, statement and functions directly. It is more natural to call Ch shell as C shell. Since wikipedia has the entry for C shell referring to csh, does it make sense to create an index for C shell pointing to both csh and ch? Can you change back to "C shell" since it is the original author's quote? thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wifidia (talk • contribs) 00:26, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

From the Veeraraghavan article, "Ch, unlike other shells, such as the Bourne-Again Shell (bash), the Korn Shell (ksh), or the C Shell (csh), uses the syntax of the C programming language." It looks to me like your source believes that while Ch is a shell, it is definitely not a C shell. And, no, you should not disambiguate C shell to also point to Ch. Ch is not a C shell by any WP:COMMONNAME definition. Msnicki (talk) 01:00, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

well, I think you are partially right. IMO, what Veeraraghavan means is that Ch is not a csh C Shell. However, it is a C language C Shell. That is why he put "Ch is a combined C shell and IDE" in the article's sub-title. As a book author of "Sams Teach Yourself Shell Programming in 24 Hours (2nd Edition)", I assume that he knows csh C shell pretty well and there is little chance to make a mistake. Comparting to any other programming languages such as php or perl etc, csh language doesn't look more close or like C. csh shell programming is not related to C except that its name is called C Shell. Wifidia (talk) 23:40, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The moment you paste "C" and "shell" next to each other as "C shell" in a description of Ch, you can be pretty sure I'm never going to agree. We have an article here on Wikipedia describing what a "C shell" is that represents WP:consensus and WP:COMMONNAME. Ch is a shell. Perhaps it should be called the "Ch shell". But Ch is not a "C shell". That term is taken. I don't care how much the vendor might like to muddle the matter in his marketing materials among consumers who may not know what a C shell really is. Wikipedia is not here to parrot marketing claims, especially when both the facts and reliable sources say those claims are wrong. Further, the argument you're making amounts, making assumptions and estimates of chance, amounts to WP:Original research, drawing your own conclusions that aren't in the sources. Msnicki (talk) 00:05, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

COI

Several editors have raised concerns on Chuser's talk page and on the WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard that a major contributor to the page, Chuser, may be a single purpose account with a close connection to the subject. Msnicki (talk) 14:20, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Noting that Chuser has been asked more than once, without giving a straightforward answer, I'm curious what procedures might apply to this situation TEDickey (talk) 20:28, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The advice offered on the noticeboard was that it's fair to ask about the relationship and to express concern, giving reasons, but not fair to go beyond that to insist on an answer or to hound the individual. Msnicki (talk) 20:51, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

However, maintenance tags aren't to be removed without a consensus - which would be discussed here. TEDickey (talk) 20:55, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm planning on removing the notability and sources tag (but leaving the COI tag). No one has really explained why the sources that were found acceptable at AfD are now not enough. The COI on the sources was pretty much rejected as an issue at the AfD. So I'd say we have enough sources... I'm guessing folks object, but I'd really like to hear a reason other than those raised at the AfD (which I think a wider consensus rejected) or I guess some reason why the consensus at AfD isn't enough. Hobit (talk) 01:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Even though I was the most vocal in questioning the sources in the AfD, I agree with Hobit on this point, which is why, when the outcome of the AfD was keep, I removed the notability hat and was surprised when it reappeared. We use consensus to decide things here and that sometimes means things don't go your way. The consensus at AfD, which turned on this specific question of notability, was that the sources were sufficient. I think we should accept that and move on. Msnicki (talk) 14:09, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the tags. If someone objects feel free to revert, but please address why the AfD doesn't support said removal. Thanks! Hobit (talk) 03:53, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

This is public talk. So please if you are using insider abbreviations like COI or AfD do not use them as captions and explain at first use. Because i have no idea what you are referencing to i am and others are not able to participate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.78.158.214 (talk) 04:37, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

COI is conflict of interest. AfD is articles for deletion. Msnicki (talk) 05:13, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

My presumption was this was stale, which with no activity in a year could be, thought since it was so short had probably already had the COI stuff redacted. It's so short now and the content seems to be an uninteresting feature recount. Didn't look closely though and will come back to it to check current state vs above which I didn't see until my edits were reverted. Mainly interested from point of view of building LabView apps whence my mention of National Instruments. Didn't know at that point they just did an adaptation for their product line. Lycurgus (talk) 23:21, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

See the Chuser account obviously was just for this article. No opinion yet on delete, merge, or whatever, if that hasn't already been decided. Only interesting to me as a LabView scripting host. Lycurgus (talk) 00:26, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Ch (computer programming). Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1776/byt20011031s0002/1105_heller.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at {{Sourcecheck}}).

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 18 January 2022).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—^{cyberbot II}_{Talk to my owner:Online} 04:01, 23 June 2016 (UTC)