> Am I unique in thinking that shells are very good for some things > but are not that great as programming languages... Larry, you are not unique, but pretty lonely... To make you feel less lonely, and not the only, I like to share my appreciation for python for such tasks. Maybe at one of those non-clinics Thursdays interested folks could get together to talk about the 'beautiful gift of python' ? - Horst
As a foodnote: though there are a few developpers on this list a grep -ci on the recent 1.5MB of my Eug-LUG archives gave 55 matches for 'shell', 95 matches for 'script' and 0(zero) for any variation of 'object oriented'... -but that would be probably another list... On Wed, 12 Dec 2001, larry a price wrote: > I've noticed a certain amount of bashing of shells on this list, and > I'm wondering. > > Am I unique in thinking that shells are very good for some things > but are not that great as programming languages... > > I know that for me if a shell script grows longer than a couple of lines > or gets to involve anything much more complex than a grep I start looking > at it in terms of "how could I do this in Python". > > True, if I were looking at widely distributing a piece of software and it > needed a startup script I would go through the hurt of /bin/sh and > figuring out the old-school way of doing things. > > but in my day to day life the shell is an interface, not a programming > language... and while it's necessary for it to be a programming language > it's optimized to be an interface. > > http://www.efn.org/~laprice ( Community, Cooperation, Consensus > http://www.opn.org ( Openness to serendipity, make mistakes > http://www.efn.org/~laprice/poems ( but learn from them.(carpe fructus ludi) > http://allie.office.efn.org/phpwiki/index.php?OregonPublicNetworking >
