Shell chauvinism ;-D, was Re: popen4 doesn't block?

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com>:
[ re Python vs. UNIX shell ]
| There's a lot of reasons. :-D  For one thing, tcsh doesn't even seem to 
| have functions -- the best you can do is make each "function" a separate 
| file.  Nasty.  I think this is what the bash folks are on about, since bash 
| evidently does have functions.

That's the least of tcsh's problems as a programming language.  You
don't need bash specifically to write decent shell scripts, any modern
Bourne shell will be fine, but bash certainly qualifies.  (Really the
best shell language is "rc", the standard shell in Bell Labs "Plan 9",
successor to UNIX - but better to love the one you're with, so to speak,
so we write to "sh" anyway.)

| In the very simple extreme of scripting a few commands, however, the Python 
| is also harder to read, IMHO.  Don't get me wrong, I'm using Python for a 
| reason, but I have not found it to be such a strong *scripting* language, 
| which I find ironic, since some people seem to think that's what it's for. 
| It's like calling the Space Shuttle an airplane, it may be able to glide 
| through the air, but that's not what it was made for.

Scripting has come to be commonly used for programming without rigor,
and unsurprisingly the term itself is used with so little rigor that
it doesn't say anything.  I think Python is fine for non-rigorous
programming, but when it comes to competing with application scripting
languages (in this sense, consider UNIX an application), the latter
is bound to have some advantages in its own domain.

	Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu