Representation of command language behavior for an operating system consultation facility

Yucca-II is a consultation system which is designed to provide the Unix user, through a natural language interface, with detailed expert advice on the use of the Unix command language. The author describes the knowledge representation techniques used in the back end to represent the appropriate aspects of command language behavior. The emphasis is on the particular problems encountered in the representation of command language behavior, which are not easily addressed within more general knowledge-representation frameworks. The most significant include the display object problem, which mandates distinction between an object and a display of the same; the problem of representing actions whose occurrence is more significant than the details of what they do; and the problem of representing the interconnective behavior of a large number of commands and options in a succinct fashion