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I like powershell, but I find its Syntax very hard to learn for casual usage. -eq is just cruel if you are used to proper programming languages. I'd love to see

I like powershell, but I find its Syntax very hard to learn for casual usage. -eq is just cruel if you are used to proper programming languages. I'd love to see a sane script language ala typescript established as general purpose shell/shell scripting language! TypeScript is not yet expressive enough for direct shell usage, but not much is missing imo (most importantantly a pipe operator).

TeMPOraL 6y ago
Agreed. Having recently written a bunch of PowerShell scripts that were too big for their own good[0], I'm pretty much in love with it, but the language itself does bug me constantly. Operators are one of the big annoyances. -eq, -gt, -icontains, -match... But I get it. It's the consequence of trying to use the same language for code and command line input. > and < are already used in pretty much every single shell to indicate IO redirection; particularly with >, it would be really dangerous for it to have context-dependent meanings. And then foo -match bar is more CLI-input-friendly than foo.match(bar) or match(foo, bar). You can get a similar experience if you try to use (or design) a Lisp shell. S-expressions are awesome, but having to move the caret back and forth to add/modify structure in your command is too annoying for a shell language. For shells, you essentially want as much appending and as little editing as possible. And as much as I don't like JavaScript ecosystem, I would like something like TypeScript in the shell. Personally, my main requirements are 1) optionally typed, and 2) piping structured data instead of unstructured text/byte streams. (And then I'd like a terminal emulator that makes full use of type system in pipes and command arguments.) -- [0] - They started simple, then they grew, and before I noticed, they've crossed the threshold where, if I were to write them again, I'd use a regular programming language. I think the point in which I started including bits of C# code in the scripts should've been a wakeup call... but on the other hand, isn't it just cool you can drop down to C# in the middle of a script and have it Just Work?

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Agreed. Having recently written a bunch of PowerShell scripts that were too big for their own good[0], I'm pretty much in love with it, but the language itself does bug me constantly. Operators are one of the big annoyances. -eq, -gt, -icontains, -match... But I get it. It's the consequence of trying to use the same language for code and command line input. > and < are already used in pretty much every single shell to indicate IO redirection; particularly with >, it would be really dangerous for it to have context-dependent meanings. And then foo -match bar is more CLI-input-friendly than foo.match(bar) or match(foo, bar). You can get a similar experience if you try to use (or design) a Lisp shell. S-expressions are awesome, but having to move the caret back and forth to add/modify structure in your command is too annoying for a shell language. For shells, you essentially want as much appending and as little editing as possible. And as much as I don't like JavaScript ecosystem, I would like something like TypeScript in the shell. Personally, my main requirements are 1) optionally typed, and 2) piping structured data instead of unstructured text/byte streams. (And then I'd like a terminal emulator that makes full use of type system in pipes and command arguments.) -- [0] - They started simple, then they grew, and before I noticed, they've crossed the threshold where, if I were to write them again, I'd use a regular programming language. I think the point in which I started including bits of C# code in the scripts should've been a wakeup call... but on the other hand, isn't it just cool you can drop down to C# in the middle of a script and have it Just Work?