why Unix?

[Yigal Chripun]

On 07/04/2009 22:03, grauzone wrote:
> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none at example.net> wrote:
>>
>>>> But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.
>>>> I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on
>>>> Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course). Like
>>>> renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or copying
>>>> select files to another directory.
>>>
>>> Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming
>>> language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like
>>> python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.
>>
>> I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a
>> reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.
>> The same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can
>> throw at me.
>
> Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that
> can't run python?
>
>> Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax... And can python be
>> used as a user shell?
>
> Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax?
> Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into
> my head.
>
> And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command
> line interpreter.
>
>> How would you do the same thing in python? Would it be any clearer or
>> shorter? Probably not.
>
> Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python is
> just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd prefer
> it.
>
> sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that
> invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and
> the script interpreted it as normal output. And escaping. I don't think
> there are many scripts that still work correctly if they encounter
> "strange" filenames, like filenames with spaces, special characters, or
> even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid character in UNIX filenames.
>
>> I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can
>> run perl...
>
> Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck
> quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and such.
> And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only language.

I think you meant "write-only language".
>
> For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better for
> a shell.
>
>> -Steve

I completely agree with the above, only thing is that my personal 
preference would be Ruby instead of python nad my second choice would be 
Javascript.

But in general I agree that Perl and all variants of unix shell (csh, 
ksh, bash, zsh, etc) are obsolete tech.

google for Rush, that's a Ruby Shell.