<story><title>Ambitions for a Unix Shell</title><url>https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/ambitions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>enriquto</author><text>This is some of the most exciting stuff happening in the unix world these days.&lt;p&gt;My mind was blown after reading two posts on Oil&amp;#x27;s author blog, a few years ago:&lt;p&gt;* Shell has a Forth-like Quality: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;13.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;13.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;* Pipelines Support Vectorized, Point-Free, and Imperative Style: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;15.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;15.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Warning: these writings can change your view on the shell language.   Now you probably think, as many of us did, that shell is a cute little hack, useful for one-off throwaway stuff, but not really fit for serious work.  Afterwards, you will start to see the shell as a glorious, essential element of our civilization, worth of respect and deserving our careful attention.  Pipes are an essential programming tool that must be supported by the core language and not by a library construct (as in python).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>braindeath</author><text>&amp;gt; Afterwards, you will start to see the shell as a glorious, essential element of our civilization, worth of respect and deserving our careful attention.&lt;p&gt;Nah.&lt;p&gt;There should be (probably is) a term for the phenomenon&amp;#x2F;trope where you can take something that was not carefully designed in the first place (like basically all of Unix) and then down the line you can hyper-analyze the hell out of certain bits of it and wax poetic about the few elegant bits that are inevitably there (even BASIC will work, yes) - while conveniently ignoring the whole is still a steaming pile. Lord knows that&amp;#x27;s what happened with &amp;quot;Unix&amp;quot; starting in the 90s, and Javascript in the 2000s.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ambitions for a Unix Shell</title><url>https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2020/01/ambitions.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>enriquto</author><text>This is some of the most exciting stuff happening in the unix world these days.&lt;p&gt;My mind was blown after reading two posts on Oil&amp;#x27;s author blog, a few years ago:&lt;p&gt;* Shell has a Forth-like Quality: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;13.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;13.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;p&gt;* Pipelines Support Vectorized, Point-Free, and Imperative Style: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;15.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.oilshell.org&amp;#x2F;blog&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;15.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Warning: these writings can change your view on the shell language.   Now you probably think, as many of us did, that shell is a cute little hack, useful for one-off throwaway stuff, but not really fit for serious work.  Afterwards, you will start to see the shell as a glorious, essential element of our civilization, worth of respect and deserving our careful attention.  Pipes are an essential programming tool that must be supported by the core language and not by a library construct (as in python).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jstimpfle</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve written many, many shell scripts, back as a sysadmin, and because I wanted it to not be a cute little hack. I know all the tricks described on the blogpost and many more. I have an intimate understanding how the quoting works and how we can work around its limitations.&lt;p&gt;Let me tell you: shell is sort of a local optimum for one-off throwaway stuff, because it makes commonly needed thing accessible with so few keystrokes. But also, shell is a cute little hack. It&amp;#x27;s literally impossible to write robust programs in it.</text></comment>