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0 pointsCoffeeDregs15y ago0 comments

Putting aside the fancy words, I agree.

Given the power of any computer (even those 30 years old), it's enormously powerful to be able to drop one segment of a pipe-chain and look at the output. Funny that I'm facing a similar issue now that some of the server world is going Javascript: "console.log(X);" doesn't necessarily tell you the whole story about X. Exchanging objects is 14% too complicated and anything more than 0% too complicated is too complicated.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

danssig15y ago· 2 in thread

> it's enormously powerful to be able to drop one segment of a pipe-chain and look at the output.

But having more complex objects instead of text doesn't stop us from having that. The objects just need to have some kind of to-string method that the shell uses.

wahnfrieden15y ago

It does hinder you, since string serializations will usually be an incomplete (or worse, inconsistent) view of an object. With Unix pipes, their string serialization is all that it is.

rtaycher15y ago

besides the toString if we could get a decent amount of the objects to be public we might have simpler formatting rules.

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