Hi Trevor and others The reason I'm teaching this stuff is that I am encouraging our postgrads to have a "script collection". Currently I find that most people collect their code together with their data, without the code being under version control.
However, your example suggests a compromise position that might be much easier to teach: Instead of teaching how to make scripts that run like commands, teach environment variables. Then you can do: bash $SCRIPT_DIR/myscript.sh where $SCRIPT_DIR is under version control and not worry about `chmod`, PATH etc. Peter P.S. just after telling students about PATH etc one of our more experienced students managed to make their laptop unusable by setting PATH incorrectly in their .bash_profile, so I am well aware of its dangers. On 10 March 2016 at 08:53, W. Trevor King <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Mar 09, 2016 at 10:14:25PM -0800, Steven Haddock wrote: > > I think the three concepts are not particularly difficult but their > > implementation is extremely cryptic… > > I'm pretty convinced that the level of complexity is not worth it, when: > > $ $INTERPRETER $SCRIPT_PATH > > for example: > > $ python my/script.py > > is so easy to use. For lots of detail on just how ugly the whole > thing is, see [1] (shell lesson link to [1] landed via [2]). Having > executable commands is nice for easier autocompletion and such, but > I'd much rather drop a link to [3] for interested parties than cover > it live with a group of novice programmers. > > It's much easier to teach things like this after folks are comfortable > with their operating system being a hairy mess of historical cruft ;). > > Cheers, > Trevor > > [1]: http://www.in-ulm.de/~mascheck/various/shebang/ > [2]: https://github.com/swcarpentry/shell-novice/pull/307 > Subject: instructors.md: We really, really don't want to talk about > #! #307 > [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shebang_%28Unix%29 > > -- > This email may be signed or encrypted with GnuPG (http://www.gnupg.org). > For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy >
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