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Could you explain more re: bugs? Dylan Araps sort of specialises in well-written (ba)sh and iirc uses shellcheck meticulously. I ask not to be combative in case

Could you explain more re: bugs? Dylan Araps sort of specialises in well-written (ba)sh and iirc uses shellcheck meticulously. I ask not to be combative in case you're just making a casual joke - more I'd like understand how bugs might creep in to (ba)sh code - even if say, one follows shellcheck and is as competent as Dylan.

Kototama 6y ago
I saw that after posting. It's not a critic of Dylan's work, more a critic of how difficult it is to write good bash code. Your comment on shellcheck and Dylan expertise just confirm it. It's like C, you could write safe C but it's very difficult. I wish there was a language with the ubiquity of Bash but modern and safe.
- rwnspace 6y ago
  Ah I'm with you, thanks for the explanation - you're quite right. I've done a fair bit of bash and still I fully expect parts of the syntax to escape my memory. A modern and safe shell would be oil [0], ubiquity is WIP. [0] http://www.oilshell.org/ http://www.oilshell.org/
- cpach 6y ago
  »I wish there was a language with the ubiquity of Bash but modern and safe« I agree. But reaching such a point would be hard. Not impossible, but hard. I think the main problem would be to gain traction for an alternative. Because if one questions the status quo, then there are tons of alternative paths to go by. But which of them are viable…? It’s not easy to pick a winner in this kind of situtation. And most people, even in tech, would not want to spend hours on trying out/developing a new shell that won’t gain any significant traction. The Bourne shell was developed in the mid 70s. There were not many other scripting languages around then, so Bourne shell became a major player. They could probably have used Lisp if they wanted to, but AFAIK Lisp was not widespread within the Unix world back then. These days we have many other models for interpreted languages. Ruby, Python, Perl, TCL, Scheme, Clojure, etc etc. Let’s say someone wrote a Python-inspired shell that aimed to replace sh/Bash. Now you need to gain traction in order to build up a useful and sound ecosystem that has the ability to replace all those shell scripts out there. But how would you convince the Ruby fans or Scheme fans to use that? Therein lies a big challenge. Getting people to continue using sh is not as hard, since it at least is standard, despite its shortcomings. [Slightly edited.]
  - chubot 6y ago
    That's the point of Oil: https://github.com/oilshell/oil https://github.com/oilshell/oil A new Unix shell. Our upgrade path from bash to a better language. It runs thousands of lines of existing shell scripts unmodified, but there's also a brand new language that will be familiar to Python or JS programmers. See http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/simplest-explanation.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/simplest-explanation.ht... It works and you can try it now. The downside is that the implementation is more like a slow prototype, but that's being addressed, and the release I made today has stats about the C++ version (blog post forthcoming).
- ragnese 6y ago
  Honestly, PHP is a decent scripting language. It's pretty fast with text processing and you can choose to play fast-and-loose or go in a more type-checked direction. It's basically my least favorite language for "real" programs, but I think it could find a niche for scripting in the middle of the spectrum between (ba)sh and python.
- carapace 6y ago
  So it's a joke? You didn't e.g. look at: https://github.com/kisslinux/kiss/issues https://github.com/kisslinux/kiss/issues ? (0 open, 85 closed BTW)

Kototama 6y ago

I saw that after posting. It's not a critic of Dylan's work, more a critic of how difficult it is to write good bash code. Your comment on shellcheck and Dylan expertise just confirm it. It's like C, you could write safe C but it's very difficult. I wish there was a language with the ubiquity of Bash but modern and safe.

rwnspace 6y ago
Ah I'm with you, thanks for the explanation - you're quite right. I've done a fair bit of bash and still I fully expect parts of the syntax to escape my memory. A modern and safe shell would be oil [0], ubiquity is WIP. [0] http://www.oilshell.org/ http://www.oilshell.org/
cpach 6y ago
»I wish there was a language with the ubiquity of Bash but modern and safe« I agree. But reaching such a point would be hard. Not impossible, but hard. I think the main problem would be to gain traction for an alternative. Because if one questions the status quo, then there are tons of alternative paths to go by. But which of them are viable…? It’s not easy to pick a winner in this kind of situtation. And most people, even in tech, would not want to spend hours on trying out/developing a new shell that won’t gain any significant traction. The Bourne shell was developed in the mid 70s. There were not many other scripting languages around then, so Bourne shell became a major player. They could probably have used Lisp if they wanted to, but AFAIK Lisp was not widespread within the Unix world back then. These days we have many other models for interpreted languages. Ruby, Python, Perl, TCL, Scheme, Clojure, etc etc. Let’s say someone wrote a Python-inspired shell that aimed to replace sh/Bash. Now you need to gain traction in order to build up a useful and sound ecosystem that has the ability to replace all those shell scripts out there. But how would you convince the Ruby fans or Scheme fans to use that? Therein lies a big challenge. Getting people to continue using sh is not as hard, since it at least is standard, despite its shortcomings. [Slightly edited.]
- chubot 6y ago
  That's the point of Oil: https://github.com/oilshell/oil https://github.com/oilshell/oil A new Unix shell. Our upgrade path from bash to a better language. It runs thousands of lines of existing shell scripts unmodified, but there's also a brand new language that will be familiar to Python or JS programmers. See http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/simplest-explanation.html http://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/simplest-explanation.ht... It works and you can try it now. The downside is that the implementation is more like a slow prototype, but that's being addressed, and the release I made today has stats about the C++ version (blog post forthcoming).
ragnese 6y ago
Honestly, PHP is a decent scripting language. It's pretty fast with text processing and you can choose to play fast-and-loose or go in a more type-checked direction. It's basically my least favorite language for "real" programs, but I think it could find a niche for scripting in the middle of the spectrum between (ba)sh and python.
carapace 6y ago
So it's a joke? You didn't e.g. look at: https://github.com/kisslinux/kiss/issues https://github.com/kisslinux/kiss/issues ? (0 open, 85 closed BTW)