> I was reading the OpenBSD install script for something and I found > that the simple pdksh script > itself was somewhat ...complex.
Slackware Linux installer and package management tools and the plethora of rc scripts on most Linux distros do still use shell scripts. Most modern Linux distros however use systemd or upstart instead of old rc-style shell scripts for performance and scalability reasons. The installers of most modern Linux distros are either based on Python or Ruby scripts for maintainability and scalability reasons. > So if you want to write cool software shell scripting is not a bad idea. That was back in the '90s. Today, shell scripting is a *very* bad idea if portability, maintainability and performance are concerned. Shell scripting is not recommended for anything greater than a 10 line script. For anything bigger and complex than that - you should use Python, Ruby or any other modern scripting language instead. > The advantage shell scripts have over perl scripts is that with shell > you have all the UNIX toolkit programs > along with even C code you write for use. That's why Larry Wall created perl so that you do not have to depend on 'C code' (binary executable programs) of your underlying system. Try porting a sophisticated shell script from Solaris to OpenBSD or Linux and you'll understand why shell scripting is a bad idea for writing medium-to-large scale programs. Shell and old generation Perl emphasize glue-scripting (gluing together other programs written largely in C/C++) mainly because they lacked features on their own. Today, things are different. Modern scripting languages (Python, Ruby and also Perl) are full-featured and glue-scripting today can be fully avoided except for a few one-liners. -- Chandrashekar Babu. http://www.chandrashekar.info/ _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
