4 ms·

I think the big plus is that you can use a proper programming language in the shell.

by brodo 10y ago

TallGuyShort 10y ago
I've longed for a language that can run both pipelines of commands with the conciseness of UNIX shells and have control structures and arithmetic as elegantly as Python...
- RVuRnvbM2e 10y ago
  That language is Ruby.
  - klibertp 10y ago
    Well, there are some other as well. TCL works nice as a shell and is very elegant as a programming language. The famous equivalence of code and data is visible here, while still syntactically looking pretty normal. Scheme (via https://scsh.net/about/about.html https://scsh.net/about/about.html) is also worth looking into. S-exp based syntax looks strange at first, but you get used to it rather quickly. Emacs Eshell is very similar to xonsh, but with Emacs Lisp instead of Python. On Windows PowerShell is also a choice. It's both a shell and a sane, procedural programming language, with full access to dotNET. Tulip (https://github.com/tulip-lang/tulip https://github.com/tulip-lang/tulip) express goals are to be good for both shell work and programming. On the other hand, jq (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/ https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) is just a DSL, but it turns out it's ok for doing more advanced work if you're familiar with functional programming. Not to mention, almost every language with a REPL can be made into a shell/programming environment given enough library support. For example Python with IPython is a very decent shell and I think OCaml with utop could also be.
- evincarofautumn 10y ago
  Not to get off on too much of a tangent, but you may be interested in concatenative programming languages. They’re a variety of stack-based programming languages with a functional flavour, in which the default style is a sort of data pipeline. For example, in Factor[1]: ! Just some imports. USING: accessors smtp ; ! Create a new email object. <email> ! That object is piped implicitly to these setter words. ! E.g., >>from: ( email new-address -- email ) "alice@example.com" >>from { "bob@example.com" } >>to "Coffee?" >>subject "You pick the time and place." >>body ! Pipe that object on to the “send-email” word. send-email Note how no local variables are necessary for simply plumbing data around—although of course you can use them if you want. The weirdest thing is probably that arithmetic in most concatenative languages is written in postfix, which you may find off-putting. But it’s no worse than Lisp’s prefix notation, and has some other benefits. Factor also has an excellent interactive environment; the whole thing feels like a Lispy Smalltalk. [1]: http://factorcode.org/ http://factorcode.org/
  - Tiksi 10y ago
    >arithmetic in most concatenative languages is written in postfix Postfix? I'm assuming a typo here but not sure what you meant. Edit: Ah, I'm guessing it was supposed to be postscript. Makes more sense now. Looks like an interesting language style though, I've been looking for a language that has the bash style piping baked into the language.
    - evincarofautumn 10y ago
      Prefix/postfix/infix refer to the order in which you write operations and their operands—equivalently you can think of preorder/postorder/inorder traversals of the syntax tree. AST + / \ * 5 / \ 2 3 Infix 2 * 3 + 5 2 times 3 plus 5. Prefix + * 2 3 5 Lisp (+ (* 2 3) 5) The sum of the product of 2 and 3, and 5. Postfix 2 3 * 5 + With 2 and 3, multiply. Then with 5, add.
      - Tiksi 10y ago
        Ahh, understood now. I figured postscript as it's also a concatinative programming language. I read postfix as in the mail server not as a synonym of suffix, thanks for the clarification.
        klibertp 10y ago
        > synonym of suffix Antonym, actually. Prefixes are literally on the other end of things than suffixes are ;)
        TallGuyShort 10y ago
        He's talking about postfix, not prefix. It's closer to being a synonym of suffic.
        klibertp 10y ago
- rkeene2 10y ago
  You can do this with Tcl ! I wrote an extension called "pipethread" to make UNIX shell pipelining more natural. It uses threads instead of processes but otherwise operates pretty similarly. Example: set lsOutput [pipethread::pipe exec ls | exec tac | foreach line { puts $outchan "[string length $line]:$line" } | { gets $inchan line; puts $outchan $line }] Usage: https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/pipethread/artifact/6fdd49244dbc66711be37f34b0a7bd0aeaa11d33?txt=1&ln=141-215 https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/pipethread/arti...

I think the big plus is that you can use a proper programming language in the shell.

by brodo 10y ago

I think the big plus is that you can use a proper programming language in the shell.

I've longed for a language that can run both pipelines of commands with the conciseness of UNIX shells and have control structures and arithmetic as elegantly as Python...

RVuRnvbM2e 10y ago
That language is Ruby.
- klibertp 10y ago
  Well, there are some other as well. TCL works nice as a shell and is very elegant as a programming language. The famous equivalence of code and data is visible here, while still syntactically looking pretty normal. Scheme (via https://scsh.net/about/about.html https://scsh.net/about/about.html) is also worth looking into. S-exp based syntax looks strange at first, but you get used to it rather quickly. Emacs Eshell is very similar to xonsh, but with Emacs Lisp instead of Python. On Windows PowerShell is also a choice. It's both a shell and a sane, procedural programming language, with full access to dotNET. Tulip (https://github.com/tulip-lang/tulip https://github.com/tulip-lang/tulip) express goals are to be good for both shell work and programming. On the other hand, jq (https://stedolan.github.io/jq/ https://stedolan.github.io/jq/) is just a DSL, but it turns out it's ok for doing more advanced work if you're familiar with functional programming. Not to mention, almost every language with a REPL can be made into a shell/programming environment given enough library support. For example Python with IPython is a very decent shell and I think OCaml with utop could also be.
evincarofautumn 10y ago
Not to get off on too much of a tangent, but you may be interested in concatenative programming languages. They’re a variety of stack-based programming languages with a functional flavour, in which the default style is a sort of data pipeline. For example, in Factor[1]: ! Just some imports. USING: accessors smtp ; ! Create a new email object. <email> ! That object is piped implicitly to these setter words. ! E.g., >>from: ( email new-address -- email ) "alice@example.com" >>from { "bob@example.com" } >>to "Coffee?" >>subject "You pick the time and place." >>body ! Pipe that object on to the “send-email” word. send-email Note how no local variables are necessary for simply plumbing data around—although of course you can use them if you want. The weirdest thing is probably that arithmetic in most concatenative languages is written in postfix, which you may find off-putting. But it’s no worse than Lisp’s prefix notation, and has some other benefits. Factor also has an excellent interactive environment; the whole thing feels like a Lispy Smalltalk. [1]: http://factorcode.org/ http://factorcode.org/
- Tiksi 10y ago
  >arithmetic in most concatenative languages is written in postfix Postfix? I'm assuming a typo here but not sure what you meant. Edit: Ah, I'm guessing it was supposed to be postscript. Makes more sense now. Looks like an interesting language style though, I've been looking for a language that has the bash style piping baked into the language.
  - evincarofautumn 10y ago
    Prefix/postfix/infix refer to the order in which you write operations and their operands—equivalently you can think of preorder/postorder/inorder traversals of the syntax tree. AST + / \ * 5 / \ 2 3 Infix 2 * 3 + 5 2 times 3 plus 5. Prefix + * 2 3 5 Lisp (+ (* 2 3) 5) The sum of the product of 2 and 3, and 5. Postfix 2 3 * 5 + With 2 and 3, multiply. Then with 5, add.
    - Tiksi 10y ago
      Ahh, understood now. I figured postscript as it's also a concatinative programming language. I read postfix as in the mail server not as a synonym of suffix, thanks for the clarification.
      - klibertp 10y ago
        > synonym of suffix Antonym, actually. Prefixes are literally on the other end of things than suffixes are ;)
        TallGuyShort 10y ago
        He's talking about postfix, not prefix. It's closer to being a synonym of suffic.
        klibertp 10y ago
rkeene2 10y ago
You can do this with Tcl ! I wrote an extension called "pipethread" to make UNIX shell pipelining more natural. It uses threads instead of processes but otherwise operates pretty similarly. Example: set lsOutput [pipethread::pipe exec ls | exec tac | foreach line { puts $outchan "[string length $line]:$line" } | { gets $inchan line; puts $outchan $line }] Usage: https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/pipethread/artifact/6fdd49244dbc66711be37f34b0a7bd0aeaa11d33?txt=1&ln=141-215 https://chiselapp.com/user/rkeene/repository/pipethread/arti...