From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 14255 invoked from network); 3 Jan 2023 15:10:18 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 3 Jan 2023 15:10:18 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 03654424E0; Wed, 4 Jan 2023 01:09:57 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-vk1-f170.google.com (mail-vk1-f170.google.com [209.85.221.170]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 3ABF8424D4 for ; Wed, 4 Jan 2023 01:09:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-vk1-f170.google.com with SMTP id 6so15419218vkz.0 for ; Tue, 03 Jan 2023 07:09:52 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=dartmouth.edu; s=google1; h=to:subject:message-id:date:from:mime-version:from:to:cc:subject :date:message-id:reply-to; bh=3MLRRsYoPEhigxrJdM1IG8k7d6M3klQZ82l6+ETRtZk=; b=R5v9xBUgLWa8CJ7mE3Bx/EQm3Aw97lOukBW3AuAFL+AjMFZ3PfRtcrXfrMJWFruoHC cqPiYmBI7/JRobEoRt/ghjwmCRl+KaKf21IOUOlXHxpdwYyN1cgGrVHL2Yxt0hHeTlKU OjvRCG1651qA5Nwmpf8m0ULN2ihy8bqcOdFtORlJRnw13ggt2zKNevSGuxJtNTH5zWqy JG4KIga8smNW9u0kCUjq4+OatJ5ws8y7dc9UzpCbBLW4Vmv4h7LpxAVDcfcduRTLgvH0 PwxW16WfChQ3+6l+VmkF3Wyt91tCvYGV1yyr45qWA44o0QVpedP9hF9PEZn4fcoaadqg 1UDg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=to:subject:message-id:date:from:mime-version:x-gm-message-state :from:to:cc:subject:date:message-id:reply-to; bh=3MLRRsYoPEhigxrJdM1IG8k7d6M3klQZ82l6+ETRtZk=; b=OCn/KR7ZBDFYzztzfe50Gtp130kxonlu+to4tpHyoLx7QQ4mcnfmysOzgdIOad9joL RQI0hIlH9hfMBk+t3zW3lt6BfDSSnLssHXxBuYvwE6xgS6Az456fn0+v7IlnETRrWAtI O2mS0ZJ6AEcavEu2XcRaDi7KmDZVhqFGSrd6hJOwvlpSGdlBlg5s9hnmP1Y408JvKvTM CzlMKMWLwjGaMUiywCiN54ztkZygb/40VqCjlb8py+teAGQTT0P2ebJLkMA3aEtdZY6z kBk458Ff+Oz+a5H0HFCFpPR/MIYmuLXNyle1Oz4mztfxdYAUpN5F5hfad+W8IrMhUQIO xgvA== X-Gm-Message-State: AFqh2krYO7vkXpgdMTUWOH6ozx5IcOTBHoE21xJ63giMSe3NOPOzrxgT llpNuvvVH6NXhg1PItLGU5gypRq7y4d8txditRjGdaz/VHkuPg== X-Google-Smtp-Source: AMrXdXs4A1N+5wq385/VCX5414XwHIjHIdDn8m3GbSdMos9QiV1un5wg0dzkJh4ipUmnPooMrGGkGAtGGOzCoDt1I80= X-Received: by 2002:a1f:1c55:0:b0:3d5:d30f:81c2 with SMTP id c82-20020a1f1c55000000b003d5d30f81c2mr509887vkc.14.1672758530864; Tue, 03 Jan 2023 07:08:50 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 From: Douglas McIlroy Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2023 10:08:34 -0500 Message-ID: To: TUHS main list Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Message-ID-Hash: ST76UV6WSEROZYCTYAZNXKW4BBTYULXS X-Message-ID-Hash: ST76UV6WSEROZYCTYAZNXKW4BBTYULXS X-MailFrom: douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: A few comments on porting the Bourne shell List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: > segaloco via TUHS writes: >> I think that's a good point that scripting problems may be >> a symptom of the nature of the tools being used in them. > I think that you're hinting at something different. > To the best of my recollection, scripting languages were originally > intended and used for the automation of repetitive personal tasks; > making it easier for users who found themselves typing the same > stuff over and over again. Indeed! > Somewhere along the line people forgot > how to use a compiler and began writing large systems in a variety > of roughly equivalent but incompatible interpreted languages. Can > one even boot linux without having several different incompatible > versions of Python installed today? So I don't think that it's the > nature of the tools; I think that it's people choosing the wrong > tools for the problems that they're trying to solve. > Jon The forgotten compilers were typically used to supply glue to paste major tools together. The nature of that glue---often simple data reformatting--inspired tools like sed and awk. Each use of a tool became a process that saved many minutes of work that would in a scriptless world be guided by hand, boringly and unreliably. Yet glue processes typically did only microseconds of "real" work. In the name of efficiency, the operations began to be incorporated directly into the shell. The first inklings of this can be seen in "echo" and various forms of variable-substitution making their way into the v7 shell. The phenomenon proliferated into putting what were typically canned sed one-liners (but not sed itself) into the shell. Lots of specializations crowded out universality. A side effect was an explosion of knowledge required to write or understand code. Such is the tragedy of "forgetting compilers". Doug