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well, JSON is a serialization format -- so I'm genuinely curious what you mean. Can you better describe the dichotomy you're talking about (text vs objects) and

by bch 12y ago

well, JSON is a serialization format -- so I'm genuinely curious what you mean. Can you better describe the dichotomy you're talking about (text vs objects) and give an sample problem that demonstrates a weakness of text ?

useerup 12y ago
The http protocol is just text when you look at it. But I cannot just send "text" to a web browser or server. I have to follow a protocol. When I do so, I can anticipate how the receiver will understand the "text" - and plan for it. The same way with shell tools - they input/output byte streams - but by convention we expect those to be (mostly) text. But there is no *protocol there. One tool cannot build a text stream in anticipation of how the next tool will understand it. Hence you can only standardize on a very basic level. In traditional shells that basic level is text lines and sometimes space or tab delimited fields of a line. There is no common way do describe a tree of nodes or a graph of objects that you can expect all of the tools to understand. Sure, you can use xml - that's just text. Or you can use json - that's also just text. At least they can describe compound values and trees. But other common tools simply do not understand those formats. PowerShell outputs objects - i.e. the pipelines are delimited so that the elements are objects. Each object can be arbitrarily complex. Each tool understands that it may receive complex objects - but can carry out their task regardless. Example: select (projection akin to the map function), group, sort operates on objects. Even if you sort the objects - the output will be the same objects. If you select properties using the select cmdlet, the objects that are the properties are passed on - and they can be arbitrarily complex as well. To sum up: PowerShell has a higher-level protocol for pipelines and standardizes an object model (duck typing) so that tools can produce and consume trees, graphs, dates, customers, services etc.
- xaduha 12y ago
  PowerShell is cool, I wish it was more popular. I also wish that XProc was more popular too, but XML is a big no-no on the Web nowadays.

by bch 12y ago

useerup 12y ago

The http protocol is just text when you look at it. But I cannot just send "text" to a web browser or server. I have to follow a protocol. When I do so, I can anticipate how the receiver will understand the "text" - and plan for it. The same way with shell tools - they input/output byte streams - but by convention we expect those to be (mostly) text. But there is no *protocol there. One tool cannot build a text stream in anticipation of how the next tool will understand it. Hence you can only standardize on a very basic level. In traditional shells that basic level is text lines and sometimes space or tab delimited fields of a line. There is no common way do describe a tree of nodes or a graph of objects that you can expect all of the tools to understand. Sure, you can use xml - that's just text. Or you can use json - that's also just text. At least they can describe compound values and trees. But other common tools simply do not understand those formats. PowerShell outputs objects - i.e. the pipelines are delimited so that the elements are objects. Each object can be arbitrarily complex. Each tool understands that it may receive complex objects - but can carry out their task regardless. Example: select (projection akin to the map function), group, sort operates on objects. Even if you sort the objects - the output will be the same objects. If you select properties using the select cmdlet, the objects that are the properties are passed on - and they can be arbitrarily complex as well. To sum up: PowerShell has a higher-level protocol for pipelines and standardizes an object model (duck typing) so that tools can produce and consume trees, graphs, dates, customers, services etc.

xaduha 12y ago
PowerShell is cool, I wish it was more popular. I also wish that XProc was more popular too, but XML is a big no-no on the Web nowadays.