Re: [9fans] [GSOC 2013] Implement plan9 commands in Go, Goblin

[andrey mirtchovski <mirtchovski@gmail.com>]

> do you envision a system with no shell at all?

I haven't thought about a system, but as I was going through a similar
exercise I decided that instead of copying the code I would put on my
go hat on and implement from scratch with whatever tools go gave me.
Freq for example uses the standard hashmap. Cmp, comm and uniq spawn
readers that concurrently gobble up the inputs while a state machine
implements the logic via select{} on channels. I can see those willing
to build a system out of this leveraging go's fast compilation and
distribute only a shell and compiler+linker, but I can't speak for
them.

Of course, the benefits of such a rewrite for the sake of
"re-imagination" are only marginal in most cases because the Plan 9
programs are very well thought-out high quality code. I just don't
want to see it blindly rewritten without any thought put into it. Or,
rather, don't want to do it myself :)