4 ms·

The problem is that now simply providing user-friendly output is not enough. For every program or script you throw together you need to provide the text output

The problem is that now simply providing user-friendly output is not enough. For every program or script you throw together you need to provide the text output for the user, and then the type object stream for piping. And then, the user would need to read documentation to see how to access each piece of data, what data type it is, what data type the other command takes, and maybe consider how to convert one to the other. ... at which point you basically have a scripting language, so you could just as well use an existing one (e.g. Ruby).

emodendroket 10y ago
> The problem is that now simply providing user-friendly output is not enough. For every program or script you throw together you need to provide the text output for the user, and then the type object stream for piping. In PowerShell if the result of a command is just an object the object is pretty-printed to the console in practice ends up looking pretty much like what a Unix command would have given you.
- michaelcampbell 10y ago
  > in practice ends up looking pretty much like what a Unix command would have given you. So... no real improvement, then?
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    The improvement is that piping commands together doesn't require tedious text-munging while the console output looks basically the same. Which I think you could have figured out if you thought a little harder before jumping to snark.
- chei0iaV 10y ago
  With generic pretty-printing, your program output becomes generic. Compare the output of "df -h" vs the PowerShell equivalent "gdr -psprovider filesystem", for example. One provides the data in dense (easy to follow) rows, while the other spaces it out across the whole screen, leaving large gaps of empty space around some columns while also cutting off data in others. The difference is especially noticeable of you have network shares with long paths. PowerShell is probably nice for scripting, but I wouldn't want to have it as my shell.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    You can pretty easily pass it to select and get just the properties you care about, or you could output to a different format with the various out- commands. I find it pretty good as a shell.
    - __jal 10y ago
      Options to select output? Sounds like advice from the Rule of Silence. But. - People above were just complaining about having to use sed to tweak output. I don't see why they would prefer a built-in filter to an external one. The external filter is far more flexible, and if that isn't enough, you can replace it. - I'm generally not a fan of applications that tailor their output to what they think the human wants. Unless there is a deeply compelling reason, I want to see the same output on pts/0 as something down the pipeline. The reason for this is that picking up environmental hints to serve as implicit configuration is hacky, subject to error and and can later be the cause of really difficult-to-find bugs. Perhaps I'm just irredeemably brainwashed. If you like a typed command line, Redmond has your back. For me, wanting types is a signal that I should start considering whatever little shell hack I'm working on complex enough to take it to a language that wasn't designed for ad hoc interactive use. And at the same time, I really, very much do not want my command line to look like C#. I get that a lot of folks these days are mostly GUI users who maybe type a little at git or run test suites from the command line, and not much else. I get why things like Powershell are appealing to such folks[1]. But when the command line is your primary interface, strong typing and OO hoop-jumping is huge waste of cognitive energy. I do feel that Unix, to a first approximation, got the balance somewhere close to right. Loose coupling with lot of shared commonalities instead of a rigid type system and nonexplicit magic works really well for me, and if tighter coupling is a good idea, then I'll build it. [1] Why they want to radically change the command line instead of using their favorite language to do systems stuff from the comfort of wherever they spend most of their time, I do not get.
      - emodendroket 10y ago
        Yeah, wow, all I have to do is write a bunch of regular expressions tailored to the unique output of this command instead of passing in a list of property names. It's so easy.

emodendroket 10y ago

> The problem is that now simply providing user-friendly output is not enough. For every program or script you throw together you need to provide the text output for the user, and then the type object stream for piping. In PowerShell if the result of a command is just an object the object is pretty-printed to the console in practice ends up looking pretty much like what a Unix command would have given you.

michaelcampbell 10y ago
> in practice ends up looking pretty much like what a Unix command would have given you. So... no real improvement, then?
- emodendroket 10y ago
  The improvement is that piping commands together doesn't require tedious text-munging while the console output looks basically the same. Which I think you could have figured out if you thought a little harder before jumping to snark.
chei0iaV 10y ago
With generic pretty-printing, your program output becomes generic. Compare the output of "df -h" vs the PowerShell equivalent "gdr -psprovider filesystem", for example. One provides the data in dense (easy to follow) rows, while the other spaces it out across the whole screen, leaving large gaps of empty space around some columns while also cutting off data in others. The difference is especially noticeable of you have network shares with long paths. PowerShell is probably nice for scripting, but I wouldn't want to have it as my shell.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  You can pretty easily pass it to select and get just the properties you care about, or you could output to a different format with the various out- commands. I find it pretty good as a shell.
  - __jal 10y ago
    Options to select output? Sounds like advice from the Rule of Silence. But. - People above were just complaining about having to use sed to tweak output. I don't see why they would prefer a built-in filter to an external one. The external filter is far more flexible, and if that isn't enough, you can replace it. - I'm generally not a fan of applications that tailor their output to what they think the human wants. Unless there is a deeply compelling reason, I want to see the same output on pts/0 as something down the pipeline. The reason for this is that picking up environmental hints to serve as implicit configuration is hacky, subject to error and and can later be the cause of really difficult-to-find bugs. Perhaps I'm just irredeemably brainwashed. If you like a typed command line, Redmond has your back. For me, wanting types is a signal that I should start considering whatever little shell hack I'm working on complex enough to take it to a language that wasn't designed for ad hoc interactive use. And at the same time, I really, very much do not want my command line to look like C#. I get that a lot of folks these days are mostly GUI users who maybe type a little at git or run test suites from the command line, and not much else. I get why things like Powershell are appealing to such folks[1]. But when the command line is your primary interface, strong typing and OO hoop-jumping is huge waste of cognitive energy. I do feel that Unix, to a first approximation, got the balance somewhere close to right. Loose coupling with lot of shared commonalities instead of a rigid type system and nonexplicit magic works really well for me, and if tighter coupling is a good idea, then I'll build it. [1] Why they want to radically change the command line instead of using their favorite language to do systems stuff from the comfort of wherever they spend most of their time, I do not get.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      Yeah, wow, all I have to do is write a bunch of regular expressions tailored to the unique output of this command instead of passing in a list of property names. It's so easy.