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I would recommend Oil! http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html It removes the need to qu

I would recommend Oil! http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html It removes the need to quote every variable, and this is fantastic

nerdponx 4y ago
FWIW this is also the main selling point of Zsh. I should go through this document in detail (thank you for linking it!) but a quick search shows that Zsh is not mentioned even once, and I think a Zsh comparison would be really valuable for people like me. Or is it like Neovim vs. Emacs at that point, where neither one is "better" and it's just a matter of taste and/or whichever one you happened to try first?
- nextaccountic 4y ago
  Well I actually use zsh (I always mean to switch to oil though), and.. in zsh, you don't need to quote variables? Are you sure? Oh.. I just tested here. It works! $ mkdir -p /q/a\ b/x $ a="a b" $ ls /q/$a x And in bash: $ a="a b" $ ls /q/$a ls: cannot access '/q/a': No such file or directory ls: cannot access 'b': No such file or directory The weird thing is, my shell is zsh but my shell scrip ts are all either #!/bin/bash or straight #!/bin/sh, so I never took advantage of this Anyway, I want to link also to http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/upgrade-breakage.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/upgrade-breakage.... http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/warts.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/warts.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/known-differences.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/known-differences... <- here it talks about zsh a bit
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    The only thing to keep in mind about Zsh parameter expansion is that unquoted empty values will be dropped entirely, while quoted empty values will be treated like the empty string '': show_nargs() { print $# } q= show_nargs $q # 0 show_nargs "$q" # 1 So it doesn't completely solve the need for defensive quoting, but at least it mitigates the need for the most part.
    - BoppreH 4y ago
      Ouch, that is a sharp corner: $ echo 'aaa' > a.txt $ echo 'bbb' > b.txt $ TMP_DIR="" # Mistake! Missing arg, failed search, typo'd name, etc. $ cp a.txt b.txt $TMP_DIR $ cat b.txt aaa $ # The contents of b.txt are lost.
      - nextaccountic 4y ago
        cp itself should have been two commands, or at least accept two flags for those two very different semantics. Actually there's a wave of unixy tools being written in Go and Rust and I think there might be a suitable cp replacement already, but it's up to distros to package it.

I would recommend Oil! http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/idioms.html It removes the need to quote every variable, and this is fantastic

nerdponx 4y ago

FWIW this is also the main selling point of Zsh. I should go through this document in detail (thank you for linking it!) but a quick search shows that Zsh is not mentioned even once, and I think a Zsh comparison would be really valuable for people like me. Or is it like Neovim vs. Emacs at that point, where neither one is "better" and it's just a matter of taste and/or whichever one you happened to try first?

nextaccountic 4y ago
Well I actually use zsh (I always mean to switch to oil though), and.. in zsh, you don't need to quote variables? Are you sure? Oh.. I just tested here. It works! $ mkdir -p /q/a\ b/x $ a="a b" $ ls /q/$a x And in bash: $ a="a b" $ ls /q/$a ls: cannot access '/q/a': No such file or directory ls: cannot access 'b': No such file or directory The weird thing is, my shell is zsh but my shell scrip ts are all either #!/bin/bash or straight #!/bin/sh, so I never took advantage of this Anyway, I want to link also to http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/upgrade-breakage.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/upgrade-breakage.... http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/warts.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/warts.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/known-differences.html http://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/doc/known-differences... <- here it talks about zsh a bit
- nerdponx 4y ago
  The only thing to keep in mind about Zsh parameter expansion is that unquoted empty values will be dropped entirely, while quoted empty values will be treated like the empty string '': show_nargs() { print $# } q= show_nargs $q # 0 show_nargs "$q" # 1 So it doesn't completely solve the need for defensive quoting, but at least it mitigates the need for the most part.
  - BoppreH 4y ago
    Ouch, that is a sharp corner: $ echo 'aaa' > a.txt $ echo 'bbb' > b.txt $ TMP_DIR="" # Mistake! Missing arg, failed search, typo'd name, etc. $ cp a.txt b.txt $TMP_DIR $ cat b.txt aaa $ # The contents of b.txt are lost.
    - nextaccountic 4y ago
      cp itself should have been two commands, or at least accept two flags for those two very different semantics. Actually there's a wave of unixy tools being written in Go and Rust and I think there might be a suitable cp replacement already, but it's up to distros to package it.