Le 13/12/2010 19:48, Stephane CHAZELAS a écrit : > Yes, they're called "commands" or "programs" or "software". > > People tend to forget that before all a shell is a command line > interpreter. > > If you're finding yourself writing complex shell functions that > don't make use of external commands, then you're heading the > wrong direction with your shell, or you are heading in one > direction with the wrong medium (i.e. you need a programming > language, not a shell).
Well put. I agree very much with this last paragraph, but the original question was not about a "complex shell function". I should not have used the word "library" either. Let me say "convenience module" instead. Something like this for instance: http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2003/papers/bash_tips/ Ideally end users could download and enable "Simon Myers module" in just a few commands. What we currently have instead is each Linux distribution doing its little bit of fine-tuning, enabled for every user by default, and painful to customize and override.