> I think this does a very good job of summing up the issue. I think the point > you might be missing, though, is that most of the Plan 9 community is quite > happy about the current state of things. You're likely right that > considerations > like this led to perl and bash - but rc's state is not an accident. We know > where to get perl and bash if we want them.
we know where to get perl and bash, and obviously haven't. that ought to tell you something. there, fixed that for ya. > Put another way, your problem seems to be "I can't write an acme client in > rc with performance I'm happy with" (leaving aside, for the moment, > questions of measurement). Your solution is "expand rc"; I suspect the > consensus of the community would be either "deal with it" or "use C". > > Actually, that might be the consensus of the community on *most* issues. :-) i see this from a little different perspective. rc is a elegant, clean, easy-to-understand shell. none of these would hold if we threw in every feature we could think of. on the other hand, i don't think rc is the last word in shells. i think a new shell would be warmly received. i suppose one is needed every 20 years or so. unfortunately, it's not that easy. tom duff and sr bourne are pretty smart guys. you probablly won't outsmart them. but you are working with a more- capable system, you're free to ignore unix, and you do have the advantage of twenty years' experience with rc. good luck. - erik
