On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:03:54 -0400, grauzone <n...@example.net> wrote:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <n...@example.net> wrote:
But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.
I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on
Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course). Like
renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or copying
select files to another directory.
Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming
language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like
python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.
I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a
reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.
The same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can
throw at me.
Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that
can't run python?
I would guess there isn't. But when someone says, "hey, I need a script
that does this," I don't ever have to say "oh, you don't have /bin/sh
installed? Sorry, can't help you."
Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax... And can python be
used as a user shell?
Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax?
Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into
my head.
Yes, I hate it more. sh is a simple syntax (described in 34 pages, most
of which are builtin functions, of my Unix in a Nutshell book), and has no
standard library. All the "library" is are standard unix commands. I had
to fix some shit in the live CD creator script written in python on
Fedora. It took me a long, long time to figure out what it was doing.
Does it *really* require you to type self every time you want to access a
member? And what's up with all the freakin underscores? You consider
that a good programming syntax? The syntax of python is horrendous. The
only thing I can think of that's worse is VBScript. It might be a good
language, but I can't get past the syntax.
And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command
line interpreter.
if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or
whatever?
How would you do the same thing in python? Would it be any clearer or
shorter? Probably not.
Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python is
just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd prefer
it.
You thought my script was unclear? I thought you could know exactly what
it's doing without even knowing sh syntax. Maybe the most confusing part
was the 'fi' denoting an end of an if statement.
Prove me wrong, show me a python script that does the same thing, and
we'll see if it's clearer.
sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that
invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and
the script interpreted it as normal output.
Oh yeah, that *must* have been the scripting language's fault. I have
bugs in my D programs too, must be because D sucks?
And escaping. I don't think there are many scripts that still work
correctly if they encounter "strange" filenames, like filenames with
spaces, special characters, or even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid
character in UNIX filenames.
That is what single quoting is for. 'xy
*$123' is that string exactly, no interpretation of any special characters.
Want to know a good trick to play on a unix newbie? Make a file in their
home directory called *
touch '*'
Not knowing what it is, they try to remove it:
rm *
hilarity ensues :)
I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can
run perl...
Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck
quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and such.
And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only language.
For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better for
a shell.
So basically, you don't like other scripting languages so they don't have
a right to exist? Interesting point of view.
-Steve
