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YouTube link for video if it's broken for others and not just me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olH-9b3VJfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olH-9b3VJfs Some

YouTube link for video if it's broken for others and not just me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olH-9b3VJfs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olH-9b3VJfs Something I learned recently is that the Bourne shell (and by extension, bash and POSIX's sh) have syntax inspired by Algol 68 (source [0]), which explains some of the funkyness. One thing I've been doing recently is writing scripts in rc, the default shell for plan9. It's a bit saner syntax-wise IMO. Versions linked against readline have file-based completion, but it's otherwise not quite robust enough for me to switch away from fish as my default, but it has some things I prefer over both bash and fish. I encourage people to give rc and awk a shot, they're both small and learnable in an afternoon! [0]: https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc https://doc.cat-v.org/plan_9/4th_edition/papers/rc

Rendello 2y ago
The Bourne shell was hilariously written in horribly deformed C resembling ALGOL by way of macros: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/sh/mac.h https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/sh... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191790
- packetlost 2y ago
  That's amazing
Joker_vD 2y ago
Influence of Algol 68 doesn't even really explains requirement of semicolons (or equivalently, new lines) in weird places. while false do echo 1 done if false then echo 1 fi argubaly should just work, the presence of do/then/done/fi keywords makes semicolons quite superfluous yet the correct forms are while false ; do echo 1 ; done if false ; then echo 1 ; fi Which is strange, because Algol's grammar actually prohibits ; before ELSE, FI, and OD keywords yet the Bourne shell requires them!
- Koshkin 2y ago
  Well, to be fair, the use of semicolons in the shell has nothing to do with their use in other languages, here they are simply line separators.
jorvi 2y ago
> One thing I've been doing recently is writing scripts in rc, the default shell for plan9. It's a bit saner syntax-wise IMO I'll stand on the point that if you're gonna forego (ba)sh compatibility, 95/100 times you might as well write Python scripts. Shell syntax generally sucks, and the only reason we still roll with it is legacy code, universal compatibility, and pipes.
- packetlost 2y ago
  As someone who worked with Python professionally for like 8 years, I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Python is an ok scripting language but it's an awful command script language. The extra ceremony to just invoke another command is a complete non-starter IMO. Ruby handles the cases where a shell script makes sense way better than Python does and I still wouldn't pick Ruby. Rc's syntax is better than ba(sh), which is the point: you get things like pipes and easy commands without some of the cruft.
  - setopt 2y ago
    As someone who also has written my fair share of Python, I completely agree. Piping and subprocess handling are my two main complaints as well. Managing concurrent processes is arguably also easier in shell scripts, in that you can just append “&” to run stuff in the background and “wait” to sync.

Rendello 2y ago

The Bourne shell was hilariously written in horribly deformed C resembling ALGOL by way of macros: https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/sh/mac.h https://www.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/src/cmd/sh... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22191790

packetlost 2y ago
That's amazing

Joker_vD 2y ago

Influence of Algol 68 doesn't even really explains requirement of semicolons (or equivalently, new lines) in weird places. while false do echo 1 done if false then echo 1 fi argubaly should just work, the presence of do/then/done/fi keywords makes semicolons quite superfluous yet the correct forms are while false ; do echo 1 ; done if false ; then echo 1 ; fi Which is strange, because Algol's grammar actually prohibits ; before ELSE, FI, and OD keywords yet the Bourne shell requires them!

Koshkin 2y ago
Well, to be fair, the use of semicolons in the shell has nothing to do with their use in other languages, here they are simply line separators.

jorvi 2y ago

> One thing I've been doing recently is writing scripts in rc, the default shell for plan9. It's a bit saner syntax-wise IMO I'll stand on the point that if you're gonna forego (ba)sh compatibility, 95/100 times you might as well write Python scripts. Shell syntax generally sucks, and the only reason we still roll with it is legacy code, universal compatibility, and pipes.

packetlost 2y ago
As someone who worked with Python professionally for like 8 years, I wholeheartedly disagree with this. Python is an ok scripting language but it's an awful command script language. The extra ceremony to just invoke another command is a complete non-starter IMO. Ruby handles the cases where a shell script makes sense way better than Python does and I still wouldn't pick Ruby. Rc's syntax is better than ba(sh), which is the point: you get things like pipes and easy commands without some of the cruft.
- setopt 2y ago
  As someone who also has written my fair share of Python, I completely agree. Piping and subprocess handling are my two main complaints as well. Managing concurrent processes is arguably also easier in shell scripts, in that you can just append “&” to run stuff in the background and “wait” to sync.