(patch for Bash) adding Python features to Bash

[Geoff Gerrietts]

Quoting Rene Pijlman (reageer.in at de.nieuwsgroep):
> I'm dead serious. I've done quite a lot of bash scripting on
> Linux and one of the reasons I'm currently learning Python is to
> get rid of bash for this purpose. I'd prefer to use a full
> fledged programming language with decent data structures,
> exception handling, classes etc.

I do most of my heavy lifting in python. I still have wrappers written
in bash that surround most of my python scripts.

Meanwhile, I've got lots of shell functions and shell tricks I use
during the process of everyday command-line operations. The sorts of
things I write there could be done in standalone programs, but not as
easily. Often, I start out writing something as a five to ten line
shell routine, then find I need more sophisticated data manipulation,
or data structures; I'll turn to python (or sometimes perl if I can
get it all done in one line).

I can understand the appeal of just making bash handle all those
cases. I wouldn't do it myself, because I want my bash scripts to be
portable -- but I can understand the appeal.

--G.

-- 
Geoff Gerrietts <geoff at gerrietts dot net>     http://www.gerrietts.net/
 "Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the 
          systematic organization of hatreds." --Henry Adams