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0 pointse12e10y ago0 comments

> Can you give a shell script example of something that perl/python/ruby/nodejs can't do?

Install perl/python/ruby and nodejs -- requiring just the shell to be installed?

Snark aside (it's not only snark - pretty much every system will have something like a posix shell), proper posix portable shell is hard - it's an old gnarly language -- but it's what we've got. And with a bit of discipline and good practices -- it doesn't have to be bad. That said, a lot of real-world shell scripts are bad.

I tend to agree with the overall sentiment; shell isn't a great language. As soon as you start to mix awk (which awk is that, do you need GNU awk?), sed and perhaps a bit of egrep (or grep -E -- are both available? Does it accept only BSD-style parameters?) -- one should consider moving "up".

And for eg: setting up a python package/program -- I'd generally prefer a python script -- hopefully one that handles different file-paths (eg: / vs \ ) and other cross-platform stuff. If you already depend on python, why add dependency on shell?

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4 comments · 2 top-level

AndyKelley10y ago· 1 in thread

> Install perl/python/ruby and nodejs -- requiring just the shell to be installed?

I just meant using any one of them, not all of them. And you can pretty much always rely on python and perl being installed.

But my point is that if you're doing something other than a one-off thing, then it belongs to some project and you're probably going to commit that script to that project's codebase. That means it has to be maintained. Do future you and whoever else has to maintain the project a favor and use one of the popular scripting languages that has reasonable syntax and semantics.

e12eOP10y ago

Many minimal distributions have only the shell installed - which make it (still) relevant for provisioning/bootstrap etc.

Personally I'd much rather maintain a shell script than a perl script - but that's just because I know shell better. Maybe shell is the first language people would program without learning it (js being the second)?

coldtea10y ago· 1 in thread

>Install perl/python/ruby and nodejs -- requiring just the shell to be installed?

You can run several of those languages (python for sure, but also perl IIRC) as a shell.

e12eOP10y ago

As a system shell? In theory, perhaps. But migrating a typical Linux/bsd distribution away from having any dependency in the shell would be a major undertaking. While some distributions already ship with only shell/busybox.

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