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The issue I have is I don’t really get the value of solving (5) at the shell level: anything doable with richer datatypes is doable with a version of coreutils
by fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
The issue I have is I don’t really get the value of solving (5) at the shell level: anything doable with richer datatypes is doable with a version of coreutils and peripheral utilities with better serialization formats. And, I’d rather the shell’s piping be less intelligent in favor of offloading more intelligence where it’s easier for users to extend: external binaries on $PATH
- 10000truths 3y agoI strongly agree, the dumbness of the Unix pipe is instrumental to its composability. The actual issue is the lack of an agreed-upon standard, default, stable, machine-friendly output format across the "give me a list of x" commands. I can easily imagine a parallel universe where df, ls, find, etc. would output JSON by default, and jq (or some other JSON manipulation utility) would be just as important as the shell itself.
- svat 3y agoOne of the other comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37335912) mentions that it's possible to use `nu` for its (5) solutions without switching to it as a shell: nu --commands 'ls | where size > 1MiB' So it seems possible to use nu and its coreutils equivalents / filters as an “island” having structured output and easy parsing etc, without switching one's shell.