On Sun, Mar 25, 2001 at 09:19:26PM -0800, Peter Clark wrote:
> those dotfiles, so that every time I view my home directory (`ls` is
> aliased to `ls -la` of course) I don't have to view pages of rc files,

Easy, alias ls='ls -l'.

In Unix files starting with a dot are meant to be "hidden."  If you're
viewing all files all the time, you're defeating the purpose of the
convention.  It's almost like using "ATTRIB" to list files under DOS.  

Nate