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0 pointsimglorp8mo ago0 comments

I'll put a point on the "it depends" bit.

If you have a standard-ish environment, you'll have an array of Unix tools to compose together, which is what a shell is best at. Even a minimal image like busybox will have enough to do serious work. Golfing in shell can be a pipeline of tools: lately "curl | jq | awk" does a lot of lifting for me in a one-liner.

As soon as you say "switch to (favorite decent scripting environment)", you're committing to (a) many megs of its base install, (b) its package management system, (c) whatever domain packages you need for $work, and (d) all the attendant dependency hells that brings along. Golfing in a scripting environment is composing a bunch of builtin operations.

0 comments

thaumasiotes8mo ago

> Golfing in shell can be a pipeline of tools: lately "curl | jq | awk" does a lot of lifting for me in a one-liner.

> As soon as you say "switch to (favorite decent scripting environment)", you're committing to (a) many megs of its base install, (b) its package management system, (c) whatever domain packages you need for $work, and (d) all the attendant dependency hells that brings along.

OK, but isn't jq just an example of a favorite scripting environment with a multi-meg install and a dependency system? What are you doing that's different from what you're advising everyone else not to do?

> Golfing in a scripting environment is composing a bunch of builtin operations.

Neither curl nor jq is a builtin operation.

latexr8mo ago

> OK, but isn't jq just an example of a favorite scripting environment with a multi-meg install and a dependency system?

No? jq is a single binary a little over half a MB with no runtime dependencies. You can simply download it and use it. And you only need that if it’s not already included in whatever system you’re using, which it likely is. It even comes with macOS these days, which is more than what you can say for Python.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408432

> Neither curl nor jq is a builtin operation.

Pretty sure they meant it as in builtin with the system, not the language. As per their first paragraph:

> Even a minimal image like busybox will have enough to do serious work.

thaumasiotes8mo ago

> No? jq is a single binary a little over half a MB with no runtime dependencies.

I just downloaded it to see what size it was, and it's 2200 KB.

> Pretty sure they meant it as in builtin with the system, not the language. As per their first paragraph:

>> Even a minimal image like busybox will have enough to do serious work.

Busybox doesn't include curl or jq. They aren't builtins by any standard.

This becomes obvious every time you set up a new machine and try to curl something, and then realize you have to install curl.

1 more reply

t435628mo ago

Fair enough point but for many years I wasn't aware of what bash COULD do. I mean one should get to learn more about [[]] and how it does regexps and while read loops:

ls *.txt | { while read FILENAME; do <something> to $FILENAME; done; }

and so on. Once you know, you can get a lot done on e.g. a docker image, without having to install lots of other things first.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsimglorp8mo ago0 comments

I'll put a point on the "it depends" bit.

0 comments

thaumasiotes8mo ago

> Golfing in shell can be a pipeline of tools: lately "curl | jq | awk" does a lot of lifting for me in a one-liner.

> Golfing in a scripting environment is composing a bunch of builtin operations.

Neither curl nor jq is a builtin operation.

latexr8mo ago

> OK, but isn't jq just an example of a favorite scripting environment with a multi-meg install and a dependency system?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44408432

> Neither curl nor jq is a builtin operation.

Pretty sure they meant it as in builtin with the system, not the language. As per their first paragraph:

> Even a minimal image like busybox will have enough to do serious work.

thaumasiotes8mo ago

> No? jq is a single binary a little over half a MB with no runtime dependencies.

I just downloaded it to see what size it was, and it's 2200 KB.

> Pretty sure they meant it as in builtin with the system, not the language. As per their first paragraph:

>> Even a minimal image like busybox will have enough to do serious work.

Busybox doesn't include curl or jq. They aren't builtins by any standard.

This becomes obvious every time you set up a new machine and try to curl something, and then realize you have to install curl.

1 more reply

t435628mo ago

Fair enough point but for many years I wasn't aware of what bash COULD do. I mean one should get to learn more about [[]] and how it does regexps and while read loops:

ls *.txt | { while read FILENAME; do <something> to $FILENAME; done; }

and so on. Once you know, you can get a lot done on e.g. a docker image, without having to install lots of other things first.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse