I'm in the process of creating some more informative documentation for the ever maturing command line interface in JNode. As a first installment, i did a writeup on Arguments. Its basically a HOWTO aimed at the Command implementor.

Steve, if you could, take a quick glance over it for correctness. I'm pretty sure i hit the main points that i wanted to, just want to be sure nothing is wrong or misrepresented.

If some part of it does not seem clear, let me know and I'll try and do a better job describing those parts. I don't plan to go into the details of the Argument class itself. For that I'll do another writeup on how to extend arguments and what is made available for the extension to control.

Arguments - The Basics

Any bets on how many years until JNode makes the list?

http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/true-believers-biggest-cults...

A better cat command might support a -f (non-URI) option rather than a -u (URI) option. A URI follows a pattern and a machine can distinguish between a filename and a URI most of the time. When a filename looks like a URI, an explicit use of the -f option would help. Or, a filename that looks like a URI can be URI-encoded with the formal use of the file: scheme.

Groovy. Grails. Scala. When it fully implements Java 6, JNode gets all of these other programming languages for "free". For example, I'm working with Enterprise Generation Language (EGL) from IBM. While I am not recommending anyone abandon the Java programming language, I thought I might mention that other programming languages are up and running on the Java Virtual Machine. Ultimately, this has implications on the design of a command line shell. I think JNode must deals a mix of languages.

This is a bit of my current TODO list for implementing commands. Feel free to pick one of this off the list. If you have something complete and working, create an issue with a patch in the issue tracker, or push a branch into the public git repo.