From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Mar 24 14:49:33 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3D9E6106566C for ; Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:49:33 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd-hackers@m.gmane.org) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EA9478FC0A for ; Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:49:32 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1NuRtd-0006KB-NE for freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org; Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:49:25 +0100 Received: from lara.cc.fer.hr ([161.53.72.113]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:49:25 +0100 Received: from ivoras by lara.cc.fer.hr with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:49:25 +0100 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org From: Ivan Voras Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 15:49:12 +0100 Lines: 36 Message-ID: References: <201003231108.45102.jhb@freebsd.org> <201003241002.56335.jhb@freebsd.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: lara.cc.fer.hr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD amd64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.5) Gecko/20100118 Thunderbird/3.0 In-Reply-To: <201003241002.56335.jhb@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: Another tool for updating /etc -- lua||other script language bikeshed X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:49:33 -0000 On 03/24/10 15:02, John Baldwin wrote: > On Wednesday 24 March 2010 9:11:21 am Ivan Voras wrote: >> On 03/23/10 16:08, John Baldwin wrote: >> >> [snip - looks like a good utility, will probably use it instead of >> mergemaster if it gets committed, like the idea about automated updates] >> >>> To that end, I wrote a new tool that I think does a decent job of solving >>> these goals. >> >> Since the issue comes around very rarely, I assume there are not many >> people who also get the shivers when they see a shell script (and then a >> "posixy" /bin/sh shell script) more than a 100 lines long? :) >> >> Wouldn't it be nice to have a "blessed" (i.e. present-in-base) script >> language interpreter with a syntax that has evolved since the 1970-ies? >> (with a side-glance to C that *has* evolved since the K&R style). > > "You can write Fortran in any language." I feel I should quote some saying from a holy book saying "Ah, but some languages make it harder than the others!" but I don't know of any such :) > If there are specific things in specific scripts that are poorly commented or > implemented then I would work on fixing those. The same is true of the > mountain of C code in the tree. Rewriting them in a different language will > not automatically make them any better. C is good enough. I'm after /bin/sh here. > "Whatever language you write in, your task as a programmer is to do the best > you can with the tools at hand. A good programmer can overcome a poor language > or a clumsy operating system, but even a great programming environment will > not rescue a bad programmer." (Kernighan and Pike) I'll accept it.