On Mon, Nov 8, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Michael Torrie <[email protected]> wrote: > On 11/08/2010 10:21 AM, Kenneth Burgener wrote: >> stringing several external commands is more >> complicated (very simple in bash an Perl), but Python does have good >> readability and vast libraries, and is becoming the popular choice. > > I used to think this as well. Then I realized I was using Python wrong. > The only reason you string things together in Bash is usually because > Bash really doesn't do much on its own. So you'd do something like: > > ps ax | grep blah | grep -v grep | awk ' { print $1; }'
This reminds me of a clever scripting language I ran across a while ago. It's scsh, the Scheme Shell. It's a variant of Scheme that is modified to make it very simple to execute processes and plug their input/ouput into other processes. Of course, the parenthesized prefix syntax make it a non-starter for a lot of people these days, but I think the core ideas could be ported to something like Ruby and make a scripting language that would be awesome for unix system automation. Here's the manual, for anyone interested: http://www.scsh.net/docu/html/man.html The Acknowledgements section on the linked page is worth reading even if you're not interested in the program itself, by the way. --Levi /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
