23 Jan
2012
23 Jan
'12
5:21 a.m.
On Sun, 22 Jan 2012 16:56:11 -0500
Calvin Morrison <mutantturkey(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 22 January 2012 16:44, Baho Utot
<baho-utot(a)columbus.rr.com> wrote:
It's very easy to write bad Perl, though. (It's also possible, but more
difficult,
to write good Perl.) Structuring a script properly and maintainably is work,
but it can be done . . . just like structuring a compiled-language program
properly and maintainably. It's all code, and can be written the right way or
the wrong way.
On Sunday 22 January 2012 01:21:42 pm Darrell Anderson wrote:
+1
Arch linux package manger make extensive use of bash. Have a look at makepkg
mkchroot and repo-add etc.
few dozen lines indeed ;)
I take it they have not seen my shell scripts :)
For system admin etc bash is great.
We say that scripting is great, but it often causes a mess once it gets to big.
Ever worked on a project at a company and there is just one old perl
script that nobody dares touch? it's several thousand lines and is
hiding in some obscure folder. But every week a cron job runs this
script and things continue as normal. Unless
you're already good at C++, just about any other
language is going to be faster
to program in. Programmer time is more valuable than
machine time these days for
the majority of applications--and for small- to
medium-sized programs, no one is going
to notice the difference in execution speed between one and
three milliseconds anyway.
A funny thing about speed. Possibly experienced coders see a difference
whereas every day users probably do not. Yet speed is relative. Often I
have read how shell scripts are slow. From a strict theoretical and design
perspective, I am sure that is true. In certain iterative tests, I'm sure
shell scripts can be shown to be slower than other scripting languages. Yet
in my every day usage, and I have written a few long shell scripts, I don't
notice anything. I once read a person's comment that once a shell script
grows to beyond a few dozen lines that a person should move to Python or
Perl. Okay. Whatever. Scripting needs to be watched carefully before it
grows out of control
Nevertheless, scripting languages have their uses, and insisting that they never
be used is just as silly as insisting that they always be used.
(For what it's worth, Gentoo's package manager is written in Python, and
the "packages" are actually shell scripts . . . and I don't think I've
ever
run into a problem that was traceable specifically to a Portage bug in the
~6 years I've been with this distro.)