I considered rust for daily scripts for the performance and statically compiled binary. But had to give up when the complexities from borrower checker came up and not to mention the limitation of libraries.
Using Rust for 'Scripting'
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Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#42I love this idea. There's an implicit assumption that the reason scripting languages are suitable for scripts is that they play fast and loose with type systems, which allow enough shortcuts and escape hatches to be productive. But that's only part of the story. Along with typing, scripting languages also had the major advantage of being fast to bootstrap and run (`ruby script.rb`) and were fully "batteries included"…
So, I'm going to stop you right there on the fast to bootstrap & run...
Certainly Java is kind of a hybrid worst if both worlds kind of thing, but C/C++? For simple scripting problems you don't need complex build logic. You can usually get by with "cc foo.c -o foo", which you can embed in the source file. Sure, if you have library dependencies it can be a bit more involved, but most modern IDE's (even less than modern) will manage that for you. It's particularly simple if you do static linking (which often makes sense with small scripts anyway). These days there are so many header only libraries that can remove even that boy if pain. On the deploy side, it's simple and likely faster to run than Rust.
Now, many C/C++ projects start with auto tools/cmake or similar heavy lifting, and long build times. But there's selection bias there: those projects aren't simple scripting jobs, but actually intend to exploit close system integration and support building with a broad variety of compilers and linkers. They do it because they want people to use the code and for a larger project, it isn't that much extra overhead.
Nah, the main pain with C++ in particular is the lack of a standard, simple library for network services like HTTP & databases. That problem seems to be finally getting resolved, but historically I've addressed by just standardizing on one of curl, cpp-http, etc. Once you do that with a modern C++17 compiler, and maybe their in Folly as well to make it truly easy, it starts to become a remarkably viable scripting language.
You will type a bit more, but the compiler will also catch a lot more stuff for you automatically, reducing the cognitive load. There are better alternatives, but if you are in a shop with C++ already, the advantages of just using the same tool as everywhere else are more than enough to justify it.
Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#43>Writing it in Rust means I can compile it and hand it to him, and he can run it. And that’s it. As wonderful as they are, the fact that languages like Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, etc. require having the runtime bundled up with them makes just shipping a tool a lot harder—especially on systems which aren’t a Unix derivative and don’t have them installed by default. I'm wondering what part of the twelve step compi…
I agree. Instead the "friend" is taught the bad behavior of running untrusted (and I didn't see any tests, so untested and undocumented too) code in binary format on their machine. The glob-rename is exactly the sort of problem a script is supposed to solve easily. I feel the author justified the use of Rust and cross-compilation simply to avoid usage of a Windows OS (or VM) for such a trivial task. If the goal was t…
> Instead the "friend" is taught the bad behavior of running untrusted (and I didn't see any tests, so untested and undocumented too) code in binary format on their machine.
Being paranoid in the software you run on your machine is a double edge sword. How many people vet their software before using it, and how much vetting do you really need to do?
Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#44Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#45Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#46Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#47Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#48Was it too difficult to ask his friend to do right click -> create text document-> open it and write 'ren STAR.cha STAR.txt' -> save it as rename.bat and double click on it?
Seriously, I'm not sure if this whole thing is a joke...
edit: not sure why I cannot write the jolly character here
Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#49While this can be seen as an interesting exercise, I can't help but feel that rust isn't the best tool here.
First, there are a handful of existing tools, as other have pointed out (I would personally go for AntRenamer).
Then, there are a few scripting languages already installed (admittedly maybe not the best or most well-known). A quick Google search would probably have given a result right away, since this is a pretty common scenario.
Lastly, I am a bit curious, why go with msvc and not mingw/clang ?
Re: Using Rust for 'Scripting'
#50One could probably get this done with one line of powershell code.