> I do scan alternative shells from time to time. I could have missed but I didn't see multiple dispatch in any of them. Which ones have it? Just to clarify: In

> I do scan alternative shells from time to time. I could have missed but I didn't see multiple dispatch in any of them. Which ones have it? Just to clarify: In which shell you can define several methods with the same name and when called, the method to invoke is selected based on the types of the arguments? Murex does this but in a slightly different way. Rather than method overloading (which is a bad feature in any language in my opinion but I get it has its fans) murex has APIs that allow for writing data type agnostic methods. in practice that means the same tools to query a length of an array, or grab an item in a map (etc) work irrespective of whether the data type is a JSON array or map, YAML, CSV, S-Expressions or even just ‘ps’ (etc) output…and so on and so forth. This expands out to all methods, meaning you basically have a ‘jq’ like toolset that works exactly the same - same commands etc - for most data formats (certainly the ones I use daily). Which in effect is the same end result as what you’re describing except without the method overloading and instead allowing me as a shell script writer not to worry less about the data type or format of the piped data. There are a few specific methods that do allow for overloading though, but that’s where functionality is a little more complex (these are usually event handlers though. I don’t use them much so I can’t say how well they work) > NGS does handle it with "if" with two branches + possible exception thrown for "error" exit code. Murex does this too. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen other shells do that as well (possibly Elvish?) Iconically it was actually the error handling that drew me to murex and the smart handling of data types within methods that kept me there. Basically all the same features you’re promoting in NGS. Which is why I’m saying there is a lot out there that does the same. Anyhow, it’s been interesting reading about your work on NGS. Good luck