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Four features that justify a new Unix shell

oilshell.org

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Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#131

Post by ed25519FUUU »

pmoriarty wrote: post #83
pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

I've actually started to transition my shell scripts to eLisp for better integration in to Emacs and eshell. As a Lisp, eLisp is not the greatest, but I'd still much rather use it than Python. I also don't want to sit and twiddle my thumbs while a Python script takes its sweet time in loading. Slow startup time is the kiss of death for most shell scripts.

Python startup time is slow for you?? It’s basically instantaneously on every machine I’ve ever used, unless there’s some seriously poorly written imports.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#132

Post by ed25519FUUU »

swirepe wrote: post #82
pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

I'm curious what scripting tasks you do with python? I've found bash to be more than enough for everything I'd like to script, except for maybe stuff with heavy json processing (still doable with `jq`)

Many things that talk API and are writing/receiving json. Also I greatly prefer argparse.

jq is nice but also a system dependency.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#133

Post by SPBS »

pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

If your shell scripts are self-contained pieces of logic, you can use any language to write it. If you want to leverage external programs available in the shell, shell scripting is still the best glue language.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#134

Post by saghm »

jonahx wrote: post #67
pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

The author addresses this argument: > However, Python and Ruby aren't good shell replacements in general. Shell is a domain-specific language for dealing with concurrent processes and the file system. But Python and Ruby have too much abstraction over these concepts, sometimes in the name of portability (e.g. to Windows). They hide what's really going on. From: http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/01/28.html#i-dont-unde…

> However, Python and Ruby aren't good shell replacements in general. Shell is a domain-specific language for dealing with concurrent processes and the file system. But Python and Ruby have too much abstraction over these concepts, sometimes in the name of portability (e.g. to Windows).

Ruby has pretty good thing wrappers around running shell commands (e.g. using backticks to run a command and get the output as a string or calling system() on a string to execute as a command and get back the error code), and my understanding is that it doesn't really have great Windows support. My impression here is that the author of this FAQ is probably not super familiar with Ruby based on the way they seem to equate the abstractions in both languages.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#135

Post by edgyquant »

tingletech wrote: post #120
FreshFries wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in the (IT) world I fear more then... Perl projects. The shear madness it will leash upon you when the dependencies fail is maddening. Never will I voluntarily touch anything written in Perl ever again in my live. I've seen the power of Perl, the beauty and elegance of it, but everything was ruined by the absolute shit show when it comes to its packet managers. /rant.

I have 20 year old Perl code I run in production. I had to re-install it our move to Amazon Linux 2. My 10 year old install process for the cpanm setup still worked. My 10 year old Python had to be moved to python 3; but the 20 year old Perl still runs

I’m a big time python fan (80% of the code I write is python) but growing up I loved Perl (after starting out as a PHP dev) as a scripting language and I hate how much flak people give it. Though I do understand since there’s a million ways to do everything in Perl if you aren’t familiar with the language it can look daunting. But I’d argue the same can be said about JavaScript and I still love that language as well.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#136

Post by edgyquant »

msla wrote: post #93
pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

Python has a REPL but it isn't sufficient to be a shell. Therefore, I can't write a program in the Python REPL just as I'm doing stuff normally and copy it into a file for further editing and polishing. I have to port whatever I did in the shell to whatever other language I'm using, which is more porting than I want to do for most shell scripts, especially ones which are mostly pipelines. Heck, Python isn't even a go…

How is python not a good language for one liners? One liners are literally the pythonic way.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#137

Post by edgyquant »

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #125
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest reason to master the shell (I think) is that if you will discover a shocking amount of things you can quickly accomplish piping between the standard Unix binaries (essentially the standard library).

IMO as soon as you feel the need to create a file for your shell commands, it’s time to use another language. Bash is great for quick jobs like running ffmpeg on every file in a folder or counting the lines in a file but it sucks as a programming language.

It sucks as a programming language because it’s a shell. No I’ve written rather large scripts that were robust but had no need to be written in a programming language. If your gluing programs together shell script are literally designed for that. If you’re doing lots of arithmetic and huge amounts of variable logic then, yes, you should switch to a programming language. Each tool has its place but I’ve seen people with this attitude spend a day writing a program in python to solve a problem we could do with a couple of shell functions in half an hour.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#138

Post by barumi »

pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

> I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it.

I've seen, and still see, plenty of Python scripts launched by a shell script.

9 out of 10 times, Python just causes more problems than it solves, and problems that are trivial to solve with plain old shell scripts.

The only reason Python "won" is because we see a constant inflow of rookie developers who so far did practically only used Python ever, and that's pretty much the only thing they know and the only tool of their trade. They see all problems as nails, and thus insist in using their little hammer all the time without even looking at the current infrastructure or even the toolbox.

I have seen shell scripts launch Python scripts. I have seen powershell scripts launch Python scripts. I have seen npm launch Python scripts. Hell, I have seen Python scripts launch Python scripts by firing up a Python interpreter as a child process.

Python did not won. Python outnumbered. It did so because people who don't know better happened to know Python.

Don't let that be the reason why you make terrible technical decisions.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#139

Post by dimator »

barumi wrote: post #138
pierrebai wrote: post #60

I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. Look at Oil. It tries hard to be bash compatible with optional buy-in to extension. Just use a superior language and give up on shell scripts, that's my advice.

> I'm sorry to say to for me, shell scripting has lost. All my scripts are written in Python, which a thin shell script wrapper to launch it. I've seen, and still see, plenty of Python scripts launched by a shell script. 9 out of 10 times, Python just causes more problems than it solves, and problems that are trivial to solve with plain old shell scripts. The only reason Python "won" is because we see a constant infl…

This is ridiculous. Python won scripting because it offers a sane way to do sequential, shell-ish things, without having to wade through "man bash" or searching stack overflow for the umpteenth time about the syntax to do something that should be trivial but is anything but.

Saying that younger devs only know python is like a FORTRAN engineer in the 90s saying young devs only know java. No one needs to apologize for growing up learning better mature readable shit.

The number of gotchas and tricky nonsense in bash could (and probably does) fill books (array indexing, string comparison, quoting, toggling 'set -e', many more). I don't doubt that there are clever grey beards that are wizards that know the arcana. That doesn't mean arcane should be what you build an engineering culture around.

Re: Four features that justify a new Unix shell

#140

Post by mplewis »

pmoriarty wrote: post #84
zem wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i find that ruby combines the best features of perl and python in that respect. makes shell-like scripts really convenient and easy while still providing the means to add structure.

Both Ruby and Python are too slow for me, and neither is Lispy enough.

Slow in what regard, for what use case?
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