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>If you care about simplicity, I would personally rather write a small shell script wrapping find/xargs/sed and hiding their arcane options, as opposed to writi

>If you care about simplicity, I would personally rather write a small shell script wrapping find/xargs/sed and hiding their arcane options, as opposed to writing 173 lines of js. I would rather use my language of choice to implement the above (mine wouldn't be JavaScript, but it clearly was Heather's) than to research all of those arcane command lines. Rather obviously YOUR language of choice for this kind of problem IS sed. So OF COURSE you would use a shell script wrapping sed etc. to implement these functions. But guess what? To handle all of those options at the command line would still take a pretty large fraction of 173 lines of code, if you added in an equivalent level of parameter checking and option handling. And if you want to make MY eyes bleed, hand me a file with ~150 lines of logic in shell script that spawns cryptic command lines. Despite not REALLY knowing JavaScript, I would much prefer to maintain the JavaScript than a shell script with the above commands.

mrb 14y ago
I believe that your complexity estimate in writing the wrapper indicates you are perhaps not a proficient shell scripter. However I sincerely believe it is possible to write such a wrapper in less than 15-20 lines. The trick is to do as little argument parsing as possible but enough to be safe (for example pass the ! -name "*.min.js" as is to find). PS: I will do it in 15-20 lines, if only to prove a point, if someone sends 1 BTC to 1F43fceWvwznv4rH7s1B3du2w5VznFJY58 :) (yes, my time is valuable - I have other things to do)
- SomeCallMeTim 14y ago
  No interest in seeing a proof of concept. And I make no claims about being a "proficient" shell scripter: You've nailed me there. I can write a shell script if I absolutely have to, but I avoid it when possible since Bash is such a terrible "language." When I DO see non-trivial shell scripts, they are just this side of arcane gibberish. The command lines above are completely opaque to anyone but an expert in EACH of those tools (I know some of the tools, but not all well enough to know EXACTLY when I need to backslash a paren, or how many backslashes to use, or when I need quotes or not...). When I see the JavaScript that spawned this conversation, despite not knowing JavaScript well at all (probably about the same level I "know" shell scripting) I was able to follow everything that was happening to the point where tweaking it to add features would have been easy. The objective shouldn't be to write code in the fewest possible symbols. Everyone would use APL (or a more recent evolution of that language) if that were the case. The fewest possible readable and modifiable lines of code is my objective. Shell scripting tends to have lots of obscure and unpleasant syntax to accomplish the most basic flow control.
keeperofdakeys 14y ago
I'd present the argument that, once you learn sed, it has the possibility to replace more then just this 'replace' command. If you tend to live a lot on the commandline, you'll naturally start using it where appropriate, and become more familiar. After learning how regular expressions work, it really amazed me how many things I used to think "I'd have to write a script for this", when now I just write a quick line of sed.

mrb 14y ago

I believe that your complexity estimate in writing the wrapper indicates you are perhaps not a proficient shell scripter. However I sincerely believe it is possible to write such a wrapper in less than 15-20 lines. The trick is to do as little argument parsing as possible but enough to be safe (for example pass the ! -name "*.min.js" as is to find). PS: I will do it in 15-20 lines, if only to prove a point, if someone sends 1 BTC to 1F43fceWvwznv4rH7s1B3du2w5VznFJY58 :) (yes, my time is valuable - I have other things to do)

SomeCallMeTim 14y ago
No interest in seeing a proof of concept. And I make no claims about being a "proficient" shell scripter: You've nailed me there. I can write a shell script if I absolutely have to, but I avoid it when possible since Bash is such a terrible "language." When I DO see non-trivial shell scripts, they are just this side of arcane gibberish. The command lines above are completely opaque to anyone but an expert in EACH of those tools (I know some of the tools, but not all well enough to know EXACTLY when I need to backslash a paren, or how many backslashes to use, or when I need quotes or not...). When I see the JavaScript that spawned this conversation, despite not knowing JavaScript well at all (probably about the same level I "know" shell scripting) I was able to follow everything that was happening to the point where tweaking it to add features would have been easy. The objective shouldn't be to write code in the fewest possible symbols. Everyone would use APL (or a more recent evolution of that language) if that were the case. The fewest possible readable and modifiable lines of code is my objective. Shell scripting tends to have lots of obscure and unpleasant syntax to accomplish the most basic flow control.

keeperofdakeys 14y ago

I'd present the argument that, once you learn sed, it has the possibility to replace more then just this 'replace' command. If you tend to live a lot on the commandline, you'll naturally start using it where appropriate, and become more familiar. After learning how regular expressions work, it really amazed me how many things I used to think "I'd have to write a script for this", when now I just write a quick line of sed.