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Re: plus sign appears not to work as expected


From: Bob Proulx
Subject: Re: plus sign appears not to work as expected
Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:51:32 -0700
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

Bill Gradwohl wrote:
> Thanks Bob. I did find the explanation in the docs. Just one more example
> of how poorly written the docs are.

I shouldn't respond to this message.  I know I shouldn't.  Everyone
knows that you don't feed trolls.  I know you were just venting and
blowing off some steam.  But you were *mean* about it.  You came and
visited our parlor, we were where having such a nice visit, and then
you told us our tea and biscuits weren't fit to be served.  Then you
ranted that our parlor wasn't as nice as the newer one down the
street.  That was just plain mean.

> So much of grep, bash, and a host of other utilities show their age by the
> numerous patches and consequently convoluted docs that support them.

So the entire collection of us is lumped together?  Even though all
are uniquely written by different people, at different times, for
different purposes?  You mention bash here but that doesn't have
anything to do with grep.  When I first learned grep I was using the
csh for instance.  Then you mention all of the others.  We are all
bad, all of us bad, the entire world is bad.  But that can't be right.
It would be like starting a war in the middle east and thinking that
everyone is of the same culture and with the same religion.  No one
would do that, right?

> Now I realize why people are heading for things like Python to write
> scripts as opposed to bash. Bash has too much baggage, as does
> grep.

There you go, bashing bash here on the grep list even though grep
doesn't have anything to do with bash.  At least one of the grep
developers really likes zsh for goodness sakes.

I know you are just venting, ranting for rants sake, but firing wildly
like that without any specific target is really not productive.
Saying that bash "has too much baggage" isn't really helpful.  It is
that very "baggage" that is why we use it.  It is like saying that the
problem with water is that it is so wet.  But if it weren't wet then
it wouldn't be water!

If the shell were something different then it wouldn't be the shell
either, it would be something different.  It would be Perl, or Python,
or Ruby, or Lua, or Haskel or Guile or any of a long list of others
that rewrote the world.  Therefore the shell can't be fundamentally
different.  But that is okay because there are fundamentally different
tools out there that are right now available for you to use.  Pick
one, or a dozen, and go for it!

In the meantime what I have are shell scripts.  Lots of shell scripts.
Many of those use grep too.  So of course for my use I need a shell
program that can interpret shell scripts.  And I need a grep program
to make those shell scripts that use it work too.  Therefore I need a
shell interpreter that is compatible with the code that I have, and a
grep program, and a host of other tools.  And I need the '+' not to be
a metacharacter in plain old grep.  If it were otherwise it would
break my scripts.  You call that baggage.  I call it working
functionality.  Don't break it.

I can't use Python to interpret my shell script.  Doesn't work.  But I
need a Python interpreter to interpret my Python programs.  And a Ruby
interpreter to interpret my Ruby programs.  And Perl for Perl.  And so
on.  That is the way it works.  Use the best tool for the job.  Don't
mix them all together.  If you mix them all together you get Perl and
we already have Perl.

> Python starts from a clean slate and can ignore backward
> compatibility issues as there are none.

Uhm...  You mean like the transition from Python 2 to Python 3?

> It's time to replace grep too to jettison antique idioms and come up
> with a cleaner utility that does a modern job.

It is easy to whine and gripe about problems.  Everyone gripes and
whines and many create problems.  But it takes someone special to
actually solve problems.  Do you have what it takes to be someone
special and to solve problems instead of creating them?

Nothing is preventing you from finding a better tool, or creating a
better tool, or helping someone else create a better tool.  It is a
poor craftsman who blames his tool for his own shoddy workmanship.  If
you are really a craftsman then you will be making your own tools.

Every time I hear that someone wants to burn the world down and
rebuild it clean from scratch I shudder.  A kitten dies.  I have tried
it myself.  And you know what?  I am not as good at it as the people
who built the world that we already have.  Because the world was never
built by just a single person.  It has always been a community of
people.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The plan to burn down the world and rebuild it is an often repeated
movie plot where some villain tries to destroy the world so that he
can build a better one in its place.  In the movies the world is
always saved at the last moment by the protagonist.  I fear that in
the real world someone will actually do it and we won't be saved by a
hero.

> With new code comes new docs to support it [Python], and less need
> of this type of forum.

You mean helpful and friendly?  :-) Or do you mean that Python doesn't
have community supported mailing lists?

Okay, everybody, I am sorry.  I fed the troll.  But I saw some
redeeming qualities in this one.  In ten years we will know.

Bob



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