4 ms·

Not sure I follow. OS X comes with the Bash shell and I have plenty of shell scripts (bash and perl) for automating my dev environment and numerous other tasks

Not sure I follow. OS X comes with the Bash shell and I have plenty of shell scripts (bash and perl) for automating my dev environment and numerous other tasks that run fine on both Ubuntu and OS X. OS X using FreeBSD as its Unix layer doesn't preclude it from interoperability with other *nix like systems.

pbiggar 14y ago
There are differences between BSD and GNU utilities that manifest a lot. ps uses different syntax. find has a different output style. grep doesn't support -P.
FooBarWidget 14y ago
If you've ever seriously written shell scripts you'll know that they're not 100% portable. You always have to go through hoops to make them work properly across operating systems systems. BSD and OS X come with the BSD userland tools, with the exception of bash being default on OS X. Linux comes with the GNU userland. A few differences from the top of my head: - BSD utilities do not accept any -options after filenames, GNU utilities do. - The situation is reversed for BSD find. It insists on accepting a directory name as the first parameter. - BSD sed doesn't support the -i option in the same way as GNU sed does. - Even different versions of GNU utilities are not necessarily compatible. A few years ago I ran into compatibility problems with 'head', 'tail' and even 'free' across different Linux distros. I can't remember the exact issues though. So I agree with the grandparent, Node and Python are a lot more portable than shell scripts.
- Moto7451 14y ago
  Ah I misunderstood the comment to mean the facility just wasn't available (being lumped in with Windows) which struck me as odd. I generally just wrap things in checks for $OSTYPE and Perl when I'm not working with the system itself.
endgame 14y ago
If you want to write shell scripts that are portable to places without GNU or other reasonably featured tools, you'll have to be careful. http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf//manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/Portable-Shell.html http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf//manual/autoconf-2.69/h...

pbiggar 14y ago

There are differences between BSD and GNU utilities that manifest a lot. ps uses different syntax. find has a different output style. grep doesn't support -P.

FooBarWidget 14y ago

If you've ever seriously written shell scripts you'll know that they're not 100% portable. You always have to go through hoops to make them work properly across operating systems systems. BSD and OS X come with the BSD userland tools, with the exception of bash being default on OS X. Linux comes with the GNU userland. A few differences from the top of my head: - BSD utilities do not accept any -options after filenames, GNU utilities do. - The situation is reversed for BSD find. It insists on accepting a directory name as the first parameter. - BSD sed doesn't support the -i option in the same way as GNU sed does. - Even different versions of GNU utilities are not necessarily compatible. A few years ago I ran into compatibility problems with 'head', 'tail' and even 'free' across different Linux distros. I can't remember the exact issues though. So I agree with the grandparent, Node and Python are a lot more portable than shell scripts.

Moto7451 14y ago
Ah I misunderstood the comment to mean the facility just wasn't available (being lumped in with Windows) which struck me as odd. I generally just wrap things in checks for $OSTYPE and Perl when I'm not working with the system itself.

endgame 14y ago

If you want to write shell scripts that are portable to places without GNU or other reasonably featured tools, you'll have to be careful. http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf//manual/autoconf-2.69/html_node/Portable-Shell.html http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf//manual/autoconf-2.69/h...