From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Jul 23 10:45:45 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from green.bikeshed.org (freefall.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.21]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D58137B400; Tue, 23 Jul 2002 10:45:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (green@localhost) by green.bikeshed.org (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id g6NHjfZ47049; Tue, 23 Jul 2002 13:45:41 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from green@green.bikeshed.org) Message-Id: <200207231745.g6NHjfZ47049@green.bikeshed.org> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.5 07/13/2001 with nmh-1.0.4 To: Mark Valentine Cc: naddy@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber), freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Scripting languages (was: Re: Package system flaws?) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 23 Jul 2002 18:06:33 BST." <200207231706.g6NH6XOV076926@dotar.thuvia.org> From: "Brian F. Feldman" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 13:45:41 -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Mark Valentine wrote: > I'll return to my "polish /bin/sh up a bit with a list type and > implement dynamically loadable builtins" view of the world, until > such time as an obvious replacement shell comes along. > > I think many of the issues regarding maintaining an arbitrary third party > scripting environment in the base system would be mitigated by fairly minor > enhancements to existing facilities. No. No, they wouldn't. I advise VERY strongly against trying to do things with sh which it is bad at. Korn gets that very wrong and makes ksh do a lot of nice things but couples with a syntax which is _BAD_ for a general-purpose language. There are _so_ many small, perfectly good scripting languages that could be used instead, and are tremendously easier to learn (much easier than learning how to do weird magic in sh). The solution probably isn't to maintain yet another scripting language in the tree. It's also not to use a Bourne shell. Maybe it is acceptable to write something totally new, I don't know. It shouldn't look anything like sh, though. (Sorry, Warner. :) -- Brian Fundakowski Feldman \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\ <> green@FreeBSD.org <> bfeldman@tislabs.com \ The Power to Serve! \ Opinions expressed are my own. \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message