111–120 of 157 posts
Reminds me of our code having llm generated regular expressions which are impossible to understand and the only way you can tweak it is giving it to llm to change.
Before invoking a command, always first check if the length of the command is not longer than ARG_MAX. For example, if this is your command: grep --ignore-case --files-with-matches -- "hello" *.c Then invoke it as follows: CMD="grep --ignore-case --files-with-matches -- \"hello\" *.c" ARG_MAX=$(getconf ARG_MAX) CMD_LEN=${#CMD} if (( CMD_LEN > ARG_MAX )); then echo "Error: Command length ($CMD_LEN) exceeds ARG_MAX ($A…
That might be sensible, but also obscure the script logic. Since using Linux exclusively, I don't think I've ever encountered an issue due to too many arguments/length. And it's the first time I'm actively searching online for ARG_MAX. I understand that different shells might be different, but with reasonable lengths is there any chance of it being relevant (aside from xargs, where it's generally intended, or better,…
Also if you do things like */*/*, then you can quickly get large command lines. Or even if you do long_name/another_long_name/*.
I prefer long options too. However, while writing programs that need to invoke POSIX commands in a portable manner, short options are the only viable choice, as POSIX doesn't specify long options. For instance, see the specification for diff at https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/d... >, or that of any POSIX utility listed at https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/idx/utiliti... >. Th…
> However, while writing programs that need to invoke POSIX commands in a portable manner ...probably a stupid question, but something I have earnestly been wondering about... when does this actually happen nowadays? What POSIX systems are you targeting that aren't one of the major ones (Linux, Darwin, or one of the major BSDs)? I was writing a shell script a few months ago that I wanted to be very durable, and I tar…
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You should always type check your shell scripts as well. For example, you just: $ shelltypes script.sh # Welcome to shelltypes v 3.23.2 # type ‘help’ if you’re stuck >>> {1) # import POSIX;; Importing 73 items. >>> {2} # append loadpath “/opt/local/shelltypes/base”;; >>> {3} # import base::YOURPROJECT;; Importing 15 items. >>> {4} # check “YOURSCRIPT.sh” Parsing YOURSCRIPT.sh. Reticulating splines. Expanding aliases.…
Where does "shelltypes" come from? I can't find anything on DuckDuckGo or Google, but this seems like it would be very useful.
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On my system, `getconf ARG_MAX` is over 2m. I have seen some heinously long cmdline strings, but nothing close to that. Usually when invocations have creeped up into the O(1k) character limit at places I've worked, I've implemented a "yaml as cmdline args" option to just pass a config file instead. Have you seen scenarios where this is actually limiting?
Yes, if *.c expands to a string over 2m. Maybe that is a lot for .c files, but it may easily happen with .tiff and a folder full of images used for training a deep learning model, for example.
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Where does "shelltypes" come from? I can't find anything on DuckDuckGo or Google, but this seems like it would be very useful.
From the output in the post I'm going to assume it's either a joke post or an LLM hallucination.
> Warning: this utility is fake.
Well played! I guess I got too excited at the possibility of such a tool existing.
I prefer long options too. However, while writing programs that need to invoke POSIX commands in a portable manner, short options are the only viable choice, as POSIX doesn't specify long options. For instance, see the specification for diff at https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/utilities/d... >, or that of any POSIX utility listed at https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9799919799/idx/utiliti... >. Th…
> However, while writing programs that need to invoke POSIX commands in a portable manner ...probably a stupid question, but something I have earnestly been wondering about... when does this actually happen nowadays? What POSIX systems are you targeting that aren't one of the major ones (Linux, Darwin, or one of the major BSDs)? I was writing a shell script a few months ago that I wanted to be very durable, and I tar…
FWIW, Darwin/macOS is especially guilty of gobsmackingly ancient coreutils that don’t support long option variants.
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I know to do this intuitively, but I have no idea why.
It terminates argument parsing, so anything following it that starts with a hyphen will not be treated as an argument. $ echo 'hack the planet' > --help $ cat --help cat: illegal option -- - usage: cat [-belnstuv] [file ...] $ cat -- --help hack the planet $ rm -vf --help rm: illegal option -- - usage: rm [-f | -i] [-dIPRrvWx] file ... unlink [--] file $ rm -vf -- --help --help $ cat -- --help cat: --help: No such fi…