Why Create a New Unix Shell?
oilshell.org
Why Create a New Unix Shell?
1–10 of 298 posts
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#2After using fish for 3 years, I'm finding there is very little reason to have my login shell maintain backwards compatibility with bash.
The only time I run into issues is when a command expects manipulate environment variables via bash syntax.
I think the fish documentation WRT to scripting could be much better, but the language is more elegant than bash or PowerShell IMHO.
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#3Lots of overlap in design goals with fish, except fish also places a premium on users interactively using the shell (which means friendlier in-repl experience but a balancing act when it comes to features). Fish’ auto completions are incredible, too.
Best of luck to them. Another interesting shell to check out is elvish, lots of new ideas there (even if awkward to use).
(Disclosure: I’m one of the core fish devs/maintainers. Edit: The entire team is awesome and the others deserve virtually all the credit!)
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#4I see that this person has opted not to use python 3 because it is 'less-suited to shell-like problems' than python 2.
In an effort to understand the reasons for actively choosing against 3, does anyone know what problems those would be?
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#5After using fish for 3 years, I'm finding there is very little reason to have my login shell maintain backwards compatibility with bash. The only time I run into issues is when a command expects manipulate environment variables via bash syntax. I think the fish documentation WRT to scripting could be much better, but the language is more elegant than bash or PowerShell IMHO.
Non-bash compliant shells suck from the Google, copy, and it works perspective. I even shy away from using zsh because most setups assume bash.
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#6Lots of overlap in design goals with fish, except fish also places a premium on users interactively using the shell (which means friendlier in-repl experience but a balancing act when it comes to features). Fish’ auto completions are incredible, too. Best of luck to them. Another interesting shell to check out is elvish, lots of new ideas there (even if awkward to use). (Disclosure: I’m one of the core fish devs/main…
Do you have anything to say about rc https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/man/man1/rc.html ?
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#7I see that this person has opted not to use python 3 because it is 'less-suited to shell-like problems' than python 2. In an effort to understand the reasons for actively choosing against 3, does anyone know what problems those would be?
From the post:
> I encountered a nice blog post, Replacing Shell Scripts with Python, which, in my opinion, inadvertently proves the opposite point. The Python version is more difficult to write and maintain.
Here's the link: https://medium.com/capital-one-developers/bashing-the-bash-r...
I think, roughly speaking, the fact that Python 3 is much closer to a sane language for engineering means that it's less suited for scripting.
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#8I see that this person has opted not to use python 3 because it is 'less-suited to shell-like problems' than python 2. In an effort to understand the reasons for actively choosing against 3, does anyone know what problems those would be?
(author here) I was hoping I would have time to write part 2 of the FAQ before this hit HN, since that is definitely a FAQ.
tl;dr I used Python for prototyping; it will be removed.
Consider it an implementation detail -- building and running Oil does not require Python, as a portion of the interpreter is bundled in the tarball. Python 2 vs. 3 doesn't really matter. It was in Python 3 at one point.
More discussions here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/7tu30...
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#9Lots of overlap in design goals with fish, except fish also places a premium on users interactively using the shell (which means friendlier in-repl experience but a balancing act when it comes to features). Fish’ auto completions are incredible, too. Best of luck to them. Another interesting shell to check out is elvish, lots of new ideas there (even if awkward to use). (Disclosure: I’m one of the core fish devs/main…
Shameless self promotion but I'm writing my own shell, murex, as well[1]
The goals of mine are akin to Fish in terms of REPL use but with a greater emphasis on scripting.
Like Fish, murex also does man page parsing (in fact I wrote mine before realising Fish did the same), but unlike fish autocompletions can be defined by a flat JSON file (much like Terraform) as well as dynamically with code.
Currently I'm working on murexes event system so you can have the shell trigger code upon events like file system changes.
My ultimate aim is to make murex a goto tool systems administration tool - if just for myself - but the project is still young
Re: Why Create a New Unix Shell?
#10Finally a modern shell that understands the importance of COMPATIBILITY! This gives it a realistic chance of getting real adoption. Shells like zsh and fish will never get mainstream adoption because they are not compatible with bash.