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A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

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Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#51

Post by IdiotSavage »

What if there was a less cryptic way to have mandatory arguments, something harder to get wrong, like

  param(
    [parameter(mandatory)] $name
  )

  "Hello, $name!"
And then:

  $ ./script.ps1 Dave
  Hello, Dave!

  $ ./script.ps1 -name Dave
  Hello, Dave!

  $ ./script.ps1
  cmdlet script.ps1 at command pipeline position 1
  Supply values for the following parameters:
  name:
Or non interactively:

  $ pwsh -nonint ./script.ps1
  script.ps1: Cannot process command because of one or more missing mandatory parameters: name.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#52

Post by jeffrallen »

Thank you for this.

Also, I'll never use it.

Because a language feature that needs marketing is against readability, among those in my target audience who have not yet read the marketing.

I need my shell scripts to be long enough to explain to my audience exactly what they are doing.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#53

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

Grimburger wrote: post #41
genidoi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find LLM's too fall into the trap of writing a bash script for a task that clearly needs to be implemented in an Actual Language with Real Data Structures. For example, ask an LLM to bring up a SQL server with some schema + data preload step, and it will write a profoundly long bash script to do that task, every time.

Try being on linux and using zsh, it constantly fucks up scripts. Having it run commands via SSH into a windows machine is even more a comedy of errors. I have to put in every claude.md that the shell is zsh. It's reached the point of annoyance I might just go back to bash.

I find that Claude does this much more than other models. GPT, for instance, knows I'm on Windows running PowerShell, and writes very idiomatic PowerShell.

But maybe that's because I'm the sucker, and since PowerShell is more verbose it costs me more tokens than the terseness of Unix shells. Oh well.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#54

Post by Sleaker »

shevy-java wrote: post #29

This is an excellent article that helps people decide against writing shell scripts. I abandoned doing so shortly after I switched to linux. Since then I was also using ruby. I still do not understand why people would prefer shell scripts over ruby (or python). On systems without ruby or python, one may see a benefit in using shell scripts; other than that I fail to see why shell scripts are necessary. Shell scripts…

Ahh yes, that Bourne guy is clearly incompetent....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_R._Bourne

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#55

Post by refp »

IdiotSavage wrote: post #51

What if there was a less cryptic way to have mandatory arguments, something harder to get wrong, like param( [parameter(mandatory)] $name ) "Hello, $name!" And then: $ ./script.ps1 Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 -name Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 cmdlet script.ps1 at command pipeline position 1 Supply values for the following parameters: name: Or non interactively: $ pwsh -nonint ./script.ps1 script.ps1: Cannot…

DUDE!

I wrote my first real `.ps1` the other day for auto-installing all dependencies needed to run a `gitea`-runner on windows for windows builds; powershell - felt like the lover I never had. And the documentation in readable comments at the top that just.. generates usable docs? Damn, damn, damn.

There is a part of me that low-key wanna try that as my daily driver for a week or two. But with that said, I'm a zsh vi-mode guy - always have been, always will be.. but I'd happily take powershell on a romantic getaway every once in a while!

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#56

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

IdiotSavage wrote: post #51

What if there was a less cryptic way to have mandatory arguments, something harder to get wrong, like param( [parameter(mandatory)] $name ) "Hello, $name!" And then: $ ./script.ps1 Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 -name Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 cmdlet script.ps1 at command pipeline position 1 Supply values for the following parameters: name: Or non interactively: $ pwsh -nonint ./script.ps1 script.ps1: Cannot…

PowerShell needs to become more ubiquitous. There are so many things about it that once considered in greater detail make so much sense. Parameter setup, typing, and naming. Flow control. Object-oriented scripting. Built-in parsing for recursive data types like JSON, HTML, XML.

And in my opinion, the most slept-on: the fact it runs on the CLR and direct access to .NET objects and types which means access to P/Invoke and thence the Windows API. One can write business logic in the fast language and write a nice CLI wrapper around that in the natural shell language, and not worry about painful FFI unlike everyone else trying to fit Python or Bash into whatever world they're using.

The typical counter to this will be: PowerShell is verbose, PowerShell used `curl` as an alias to Invoke-WebRequest instead of the Real Thing™. Neither are real arguments.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#57

Post by kergonath »

refp wrote: post #49
brabel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very common that the most upvoted comment on a post is a mistaken correction. People seem to love comments seemingly proving that the post is wrong without actually checking anything. And once it has enough upvotes a big discussion may follow up with personal attacks on the author or other questionable comments, while the people trying to point out that the post actually is accurate get either buried under the c…

I have never been in this situation before but I do agree with you, and honestly it feels very bad. I saw the comment when it was posted and, perhaps naively, thought "oh well, no one will care - its just another fluff comment". Fast-forward to seeing that comment climb up the ranks, posted by a person who has 270x my karma, who seemingly gets upvotes by just.. writing things? no proof? no rationale? nothing? Yeah, f…

Don’t worry, everyone who reads the comment will read yours as well, which is itself interesting.

> Yeah, feels bad. I'm super happy so many are enjoying the article, and this situation can't take too much away from that, but man.. discouraging for sure.

Again, don’t worry too much about that. The story got upvoted to the front page and lots of people will read it, that’s what matters. Not that a misguided post got a bunch of upvotes.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#58

Post by rezonant »

refp wrote: post #55
IdiotSavage wrote: post #51

What if there was a less cryptic way to have mandatory arguments, something harder to get wrong, like param( [parameter(mandatory)] $name ) "Hello, $name!" And then: $ ./script.ps1 Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 -name Dave Hello, Dave! $ ./script.ps1 cmdlet script.ps1 at command pipeline position 1 Supply values for the following parameters: name: Or non interactively: $ pwsh -nonint ./script.ps1 script.ps1: Cannot…

DUDE! I wrote my first real `.ps1` the other day for auto-installing all dependencies needed to run a `gitea`-runner on windows for windows builds; powershell - felt like the lover I never had. And the documentation in readable comments at the top that just.. generates usable docs? Damn, damn, damn. There is a part of me that low-key wanna try that as my daily driver for a week or two. But with that said, I'm a zsh v…

An attempt was made, but just run `help get-item` in powershell and tell me whether it sparks you with joy.

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#59

Post by kergonath »

Grimburger wrote: post #41
genidoi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find LLM's too fall into the trap of writing a bash script for a task that clearly needs to be implemented in an Actual Language with Real Data Structures. For example, ask an LLM to bring up a SQL server with some schema + data preload step, and it will write a profoundly long bash script to do that task, every time.

Try being on linux and using zsh, it constantly fucks up scripts. Having it run commands via SSH into a windows machine is even more a comedy of errors. I have to put in every claude.md that the shell is zsh. It's reached the point of annoyance I might just go back to bash.

> It's reached the point of annoyance I might just go back to bash.

You can use zsh as the default shell and still write your scripts for bash. Actually, it’s an advice I saw more than a couple of times. Otherwise you need to translate the bash-isms when you get bits of code from random places on the Internet.

Just put the right shebang (or ask Claude to do it). What’s the problem?

Re: A shell colon does nothing. Use it anyway

#60

Post by srcoder »

Grimburger wrote: post #41
genidoi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find LLM's too fall into the trap of writing a bash script for a task that clearly needs to be implemented in an Actual Language with Real Data Structures. For example, ask an LLM to bring up a SQL server with some schema + data preload step, and it will write a profoundly long bash script to do that task, every time.

Try being on linux and using zsh, it constantly fucks up scripts. Having it run commands via SSH into a windows machine is even more a comedy of errors. I have to put in every claude.md that the shell is zsh. It's reached the point of annoyance I might just go back to bash.

Just run your llm in a container with the tools it needs. It makes your pc more secure by removing the risk of doing something destructive to your computer and the llm can do llm. Also, llms ssh'ing to the outside world? Asking for trouble later on
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