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I don't feel as strongly about it as Sir_Cmpwn does but I agree with him. The logic goes something like: you should only use shell scripts for small scripts and

by simias 9y ago

I don't feel as strongly about it as Sir_Cmpwn does but I agree with him. The logic goes something like: you should only use shell scripts for small scripts and not complex applications. Ergo the added functionality of bash scripts should not be necessary anyway and might actually lead you to believe that it's a proper programming language. Or to put it the other way around: if you find yourself writing a POSIX shell script and find that you'd like to use more advanced features then one of two things can happen: - You need portability to SunOS 4, so you suck it up and keep hacking your script because bash is not an option anyway; - You don't need portability, so then why not use a proper programming language like python, perl or ruby rather than upgrading from crappy sh to slightly-less-crappy bash?

avar 9y ago
This logic is insane. This is like a company that mainly does C++ or Java saying that if you must use a scripting language it must be Tcl, not Perl or Python, least you get too comfortable with it. If you want a policy against shellscripts growing out of hand have a policy against that, not that you must use the lowest common denominator even though you have Bash everywhere. And I'm saying this as someone who almost exclusively writes POSIX sh for portability reasons, but my software isn't meant to target just Google's infra.
- simias 9y ago
  I think it would be perfectly sane for a company to dictate which scripting language their environment will support. Shell scripts are a bit different though because if you write a large enough software system on a unix-like OS you'll probably want to write a few shell scripts here and there to glue things together, so forbidding them completely would be a bit silly and counterproductive. Saying "avoid shell scripts, if you really have to write one it must be simple and use POSIX sh" is not particularly insane to me. But anyway my argument was more about my opinion about a developer talking for myself, not a company style guide. Life's too short to learn two shell dialects so I can either learn POSIX which will work basically everywhere and will let me write any simple script just fine or write Bash whose added complexity I probably won't need or even want. The fact that I'm an embedded dev probably biases my view though, I generally target environments where bash isn't an option anyway.

by simias 9y ago

avar 9y ago

This logic is insane. This is like a company that mainly does C++ or Java saying that if you must use a scripting language it must be Tcl, not Perl or Python, least you get too comfortable with it. If you want a policy against shellscripts growing out of hand have a policy against that, not that you must use the lowest common denominator even though you have Bash everywhere. And I'm saying this as someone who almost exclusively writes POSIX sh for portability reasons, but my software isn't meant to target just Google's infra.

simias 9y ago
I think it would be perfectly sane for a company to dictate which scripting language their environment will support. Shell scripts are a bit different though because if you write a large enough software system on a unix-like OS you'll probably want to write a few shell scripts here and there to glue things together, so forbidding them completely would be a bit silly and counterproductive. Saying "avoid shell scripts, if you really have to write one it must be simple and use POSIX sh" is not particularly insane to me. But anyway my argument was more about my opinion about a developer talking for myself, not a company style guide. Life's too short to learn two shell dialects so I can either learn POSIX which will work basically everywhere and will let me write any simple script just fine or write Bash whose added complexity I probably won't need or even want. The fact that I'm an embedded dev probably biases my view though, I generally target environments where bash isn't an option anyway.