11–20 of 281 posts
I don’t remember where I got it, but I have a simple implementation of a command-line spinner that I use keyboard shortcuts to add to most scripts. Has been a huge quality of life improvement but I wish I could just as seamlessly drop in a progress bar (of course, knowing how far along you are is more complex than knowing you’re still chugging along).
can you share it?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12498304/using-bash-to-d...
Validating parameters - a built in declarative feature! E.g.: ValidateNotNullOrEmpty.
Showing progress — also built in, and doesn’t pollute the output stream so you can process returned text AND see progress at the same time. (Write-Progress)
Error handling — Try { } Catch { } Finally { } works just like with proper programming languages.
Platform specific — PowerShell doesn’t rely on a huge collection of non-standard CLI tools for essential functionality. It has built-in portable commands for sorting, filtering, format conversions, and many more. Works the same on Linux and Windows.
Etc…
PS: Another super power that bash users aren’t even aware they’re missing out on is that PowerShell can be embedded into a process as a library (not an external process!!) and used to build an entire GUI that just wraps the CLI commands. This works because the inputs and outputs are strongly typed objects so you can bind UI controls to them trivially. It can also define custom virtual file systems with arbitrary capabilities so you can bind tree navigation controls to your services or whatever. You can “cd” into IIS, Exchange, and SQL and navigate them like they’re a drive. Try that with bash!
One rule I like, is to ensure that, as well as validation, all validated information is dumped in a convenient format prior to running the rest of the script.
This is super helpful, assuming that some downstream process will need pathnames, or some other detail of the process just executed.
Every time I see a “good” bash script it reminds me of how incredibly primitive every shell is other than PowerShell. Validating parameters - a built in declarative feature! E.g.: ValidateNotNullOrEmpty. Showing progress — also built in, and doesn’t pollute the output stream so you can process returned text AND see progress at the same time. (Write-Progress) Error handling — Try { } Catch { } Finally { } works just l…
PowerShell blows bash out of the water. I love it.
Every time I see a “good” bash script it reminds me of how incredibly primitive every shell is other than PowerShell. Validating parameters - a built in declarative feature! E.g.: ValidateNotNullOrEmpty. Showing progress — also built in, and doesn’t pollute the output stream so you can process returned text AND see progress at the same time. (Write-Progress) Error handling — Try { } Catch { } Finally { } works just l…
Re: non-standard tools, if you’re referring to timeout, that’s part of GNU coreutils. It’s pretty standard for Linux. BSDs also have it from what I can tell, so it’s probably a Mac-ism. In any case, you could just pipe through sleep to achieve the same thing.
> …inputs and outputs are strongly typed objects
And herein is the difference. *nix-land has everything as a file. It’s the universal communication standard, and it’s extremely unlikely to change. I have zero desire to navigate a DB as though it were a mount point, and I’m unsure why you would ever want to. Surely SQL Server has a CLI tool like MySQL and Postgres.
Every time I see a “good” bash script it reminds me of how incredibly primitive every shell is other than PowerShell. Validating parameters - a built in declarative feature! E.g.: ValidateNotNullOrEmpty. Showing progress — also built in, and doesn’t pollute the output stream so you can process returned text AND see progress at the same time. (Write-Progress) Error handling — Try { } Catch { } Finally { } works just l…
Bash also has a built-in to validate parameters; it’s called test, and is usually called with [], or [[]] for some bash-specifics. Re: non-standard tools, if you’re referring to timeout, that’s part of GNU coreutils. It’s pretty standard for Linux. BSDs also have it from what I can tell, so it’s probably a Mac-ism. In any case, you could just pipe through sleep to achieve the same thing. > …inputs and outputs are str…
You just said everything “is a file” and then dismissed out of hand a system that takes that abstraction even further!
PowerShell is more UNIX than UNIX!
I'll probably also combine a few git commands for every commit and push.
command -v tput &>/dev/null && [ -t 1 ] && [ -z "${NO_COLOR:-}" ] || tput() { true; }
This little snippet of setup lets you sprinkle tput invocations through your script knowing that it's going to do the right thing in any situation.
I was so frustrated by having to enter a lot of information for every new git project (I use a new VM for each project) so I wrote a shell script that automates everything for me. I'll probably also combine a few git commands for every commit and push.
I also use VMs (qemu microvms) based on docker images for development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bash also has a built-in to validate parameters; it’s called test, and is usually called with [], or [[]] for some bash-specifics. Re: non-standard tools, if you’re referring to timeout, that’s part of GNU coreutils. It’s pretty standard for Linux. BSDs also have it from what I can tell, so it’s probably a Mac-ism. In any case, you could just pipe through sleep to achieve the same thing. > …inputs and outputs are str…
The CLI tool is PowerShell. You just said everything “is a file” and then dismissed out of hand a system that takes that abstraction even further! PowerShell is more UNIX than UNIX!
What I’m saying is that in *nix tooling, things are typically designed to do one thing well. So no, I don’t want my shell to also have to talk MySQL, Postgres, SQL Server, DB2, HTTP, FTP, SMTP…