> I'm sure lisp does it better Lisp does nothing. It is a programming language. > Just that I believe Bash et al to have a lower barrier of entry than Lisp I

> I'm sure lisp does it better Lisp does nothing. It is a programming language. > Just that I believe Bash et al to have a lower barrier of entry than Lisp I doubt that, given how horrible Bash as a language and as a shell is. There is no reason why there can't be more sane command systems and better shell languages. See the zsh documentation on completion: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide06.html http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide06.html This is all totally over the head of the average user. _perforce_revisions() { local rline match mbegin mend pfx local -a rl pfx=${${(Q)PREFIX}%%\#*} compset -P '*\#' # Numerical revision numbers, possibly with text. if [[ -z $PREFIX || $PREFIX = <-> ]]; then # always allowed (same as none) rl=($rl 0) _call_program filelog p4 filelog \$pfx 2>/dev/null | while read rline; do if [[ $rline = (#b)'... #'(<->)*\'(*)\' ]]; then rl=($l "${match[1]}:${match[2]}") fi done fi # Non-numerical (special) revision names. if [[ -z $PREFIX || $PREFIX != <-> ]]; then rl=($rl 'head:head revision' 'none:empty revision' 'have:current synced revision') fi _describe -t revisions 'revision' rl } Tell me that this piece of code has a 'low barrier of entry' or even a 'lower barrier of entry'. It's just that a generation of experts has been self selected to find that usable. > but I was never arguing that UNIX shells are better Lisp to begin with I was not talking about Lisp. I was talking about software. One could write much better command shells in C than what Unix shells offers. I understand that certain people find Unix like shells attractive. From a general user interface perspective they are horrible.