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Adding Some Spice To *nix Shell Scripts

Posted by kdawson on from the ten-little-endians dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Developing GUI script-based applications is time-consuming and expensive. Most Unix-based scripts run in a CLI mode or over a secure ssh session. The Unix shells are quite sophisticated programming languages in their own right: they are easy to design and quick to build, but they are not user-friendly in the same way the Unix commands aren't (see the Unix haters books). Both Unix and bash provide features for writing user friendly scripts using various tools to build powerful, interactive, user-friendly scripts that run under the bash shell on Linux or Unix. What tools do you use that spice up your scripts on the Linux or Unix platforms?"

2 of 411 comments (clear)

  1. Stop using the Shell by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The shell is a poor clone of 1950's algol. Today, scripting in Ruby or Python yields scripts that can handle errors with advanced facilities like exceptions, and is more maintainable, and can connect to a number of different GUIs or the web.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Stop using the Shell by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are times when bash/ash/dash... are all that is available or can be made available

      Because you're running Busybox. Which means it's my fault :-)

      The evolutionary successor of busybox, which I've been thinking about for a while, will not use the shell language. We can raise the bar significantly.

      --
      Bruce Perens.