This is the bash I wrote to check their results were sorted properly on Linux:
diff <(cat output.txt) <(cat input.txt | sort -n)
cat input.txt | foreach-object { [Int] $_ } | sort-object | out-file -encoding ascii sorted.txt
diff (cat output.txt) (cat sorted.txt)
Unfortunately, I was surprised to discover that PowerShell's diff found no differences between a sorted file of numbers and the unsorted file of numbers.
For reference, `Compare-Object -SyncWindow 0` would give the behavior you wanted. The default is [Int32]::MaxValue.
Aliasing UNIX command names is another one of PowerShell's mistakes in my opinion, because it creates the expectation that they work the same way when they often very much don't. Ultimately rather than help UNIX users, as was probably intended, this just confuses and annoys them.
Compatibility layers are great, when they're actually compatible. Almost-compatible layers are a nightmare.
That's why you should not use them. You decided to use them.
If you search "PowerShell compare two files", it becomes pretty clear this is a common confusion even among people using the name Compare-Object. For example, the top serverfault question has an incorrect top-voted, accepted answer [2].
[1]: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft...
UNIX shells can do all that too.
> Additionally, by piping objects instead of text, you aren't caught off guard by things like spaces in a path name.
Not just spaces, to be fair. Files that begin with a hyphen can cause major issues too.
There’s definitely a lot of weird edge cases with UNIX shells but on the whole I still find them easier to work with than Powershell. But that’s just me
Or interact with running applications using the OS APIs like Powershell allows with WMI, COM, OLE Automation and .NET?
Yes, there is DBUS, but isn't really integrated across the whole stack.
dlcall
> Or interact with running applications using the OS APIs like Powershell allows with WMI, COM, OLE Automation and .NET?
Depends what you need. You can use nc -U /var/run/socket or pipes with expect. If you have root permissions you can use gdb scripting/ebpf to communicate with user-space/kernel-space data of your application.
> Yes, there is DBUS, but isn't really integrated across the whole stack.
DBUS is a bus for desktops/mobile. I never saw that someone use it for server applications. The main idea(after KISS) of the Linux shell is that if you can't write something in awk it will be better to use python. Actually, in the Linux world, GRPC/REST is more common than OS-level API.
Actually, this comparison is not correct. Windows and Unix have a different philosophy of kernel<->user level interaction. While Windows tries to add all functionality to the kernel, Unix does this on user level. Remember the KISS principle. So If you comfortable with Windows OS level API it's good for you, but for Unix world, it's not necessary to do something because we already have a different inter-process communication approach.
Pipe based interactions work properly only across CLI based applications, and even then the applications need to be explicitly written to accept and parse the data.
PowerShell or other Xerox inspired shells don't need kernel support to achieve their workflows.
Unix shells are quite good for their purpose. It's not a full-featured programming language. Can you explain what is "poor man's REPL"?
> Pipe based interactions work properly only across CLI based applications
Yes. If you want to find something in logs or looking at any other text data pipes is a good solution. In any other case(like binary data) it will be better to choose GRPC(or any other RPC). I never have seen GUI apps on servers, sorry.
> PowerShell or other Xerox inspired shells don't need kernel support to achieve their workflows.
Good for them :)
An approximation of it would be to have a shell that is a Jupyter netbook with access to the whole set of OS APIs, shared libraries and applications, with the ability to jump into the debugger at any given step of the pipeline, and redo the current step.
I bet you saw GUI apps on UNIX workstations, though.
Then again, maybe Steve Jobs was right after all.
https://www.usenix.org/blog/vault-steve-jobs-keynotes-1987-u...
https://www.cake.co/conversations/rZXhqtP/that-time-i-had-st...
Shell is a command-line interpreter with additional functionality like scripting. Why it should have fully functional REPL? Lisp/ST/etc are programming languages, they are uncomfortable for copying files, moving directories, calling curl or using tar.
> An approximation of it would be to have a shell that is a Jupyter netbook with access to the whole set of OS APIs, shared libraries and applications, with the ability to jump into the debugger at any given step of the pipeline, and redo the current step.
You can use python for this purpose. I don't understand why Unix shell should have all this functionality.
> I bet you saw GUI apps on UNIX workstations, though.
Yes, of course, I have GUI apps on my MacBook, but they don't use piping for inter-process communication because bi-directional pipes are not quite useful like an ordinary RPC.
Lisp is an interactive programming language. On can run functions like COPY-FILE, RENAME-FILE, ...
The Listener of the Symbolics Lisp Machine has commands which allow prompting of arguments, input menus, completion, object reuse, etc. It's also integrated in Lisp. For example you can list a directory using a command and then use the pathname objects in calls to Lisp functions. One can also use the output of Lisp functions as input to commands. It's an interesting mix of a command interpreter and a Lisp REPL.
I get so utterly sick of stupid arguments where people compare their tools and then proceed to makes claims that one is objectively better than another when it’s clearly just a matter of personal taste
That’s the problem with Powershell for me, it’s taken the REPL concept but made it too feature rich and too verbose so you lose the speed of writing the code and simplicity of piping predictable streams of data.
The thing with Linux / UNIX is it’s very command line driven from the outset. So if you wanted to do the function calls from shared libraries et al you could write a wrapper in C, Python, Perl, whatever and still use Bash etc to interface with it. You’re not tied to using Bash to solve all of your problems. Bash just provides a convenient interface for chaining all those tools in other languages together. Now I know the same can be said for command prompts on Windows but for whatever reason that seems to be less common than it is on POSIX.
UNIX shells are a poor imitation of it.
I don’t happen to like Powershell. That doesn’t make me wrong. That literally just means I don’t happen to like Powershell. Period.
(and voting me down for personal preference is really just pathetic)
the interactive REPL was introduced by Lisp around 1962 way before Lisp Machines, Smalltalk...
You surely could not display inline structured data and interact with it graphically on an IBM 704 teletype.
Unless you count BBC BASIC?
The entire objectivity of it is ruined by weird edge cases and knowledge. The car only goes straight if both rear windows are open. You have to say "beetlejuice" three times before putting it in reverse etc etc.
You can tab complete powershell cmdlet switches. And MSDN has extensive and good documentation. Here's the page for Invoke-WebRequest. Notice the very first switch listed. Further note that Microsoft realized they screwed this up and deprecated the switch in PS 6.0 since it is now the default.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft...
How do you unzip a 20 gig file in powershell?
1. You can use the windows shell via complicated series of calls. This runs like ass as the windows built in decompression is terrible. Also it only works properly if there's a desktop session running so over WinRM it does with a COM error.
2. Find out which version of powershell you have, hope it's 5.0 or later or install the right WMF version and then run expand-archive. And it still runs like ass. But oh no we can't because now we have to push WMF 5.0 to 150 servers which is going to take DAYS with SCCM. Some kit is on Windows 2012, some on 2012 R2 and some on 2016 because it's so damn hard migrating stuff as it has to be done by hand so you have a mix of stuff leading to a nightmare from hell.
3. Import System.IO.Compression and call .Net to do it then wrap it in a cmdlet called Expand-Archive, then wonder why it breaks when someone pushes out WMF 5.0+
4. Push 7za.exe out with ansible and run that.
This is the problem. No good outcome for really simple tasks. Friction for all of them.
Edit: I'm being 100% honest here and say I hate it with such a passion because I've lived in the same building as it for several years, not because I'm not aware of how it works.
...and? Why is that a problem? It is an advantage that PowerShell can call on the CLR directly (including its C FFI).
Exception calling "ExtractToDirectory" with "2" argument(s): "End of Central Directory record could not be found."
7zip works fine!
(copied straight from my MASSIVE OneNote book of weird powershell and .Net errors and workarounds). Also they just deprecated OneNote desktop other than the turdy UWP app. Another thing to be angry about.
Consistency, trust over everything.
Consistency? In UNIX tools? No. What you have is familiarity. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to be said for working with tools you're familiar with, but again that doesn't mean they are actually objectively better tools.
Consistently as in it stays doing the intended job in as an idempotent manor as possible.
Whether or not it’s ugly or elegant don’t matter if it doesn’t work or stay working.
You can argue semantics but this is a turd that can’t be glittered.
Another way to look at powershell is that the idea is good but the implementation isn’t. Unix style shells the implementation is excellent but the idea is mediocre. All productivity and therefore business value is really tied to the implementation quality.
I wouldn't entirely disagree with that statement.
> Unix style shells the implementation is excellent but the idea is mediocre.
This I would. The idea was a really good one... in the 70s. It has utterly failed to evolve since then. The implementation is actually pretty horrible. If you don't have a lot of familiarity with it it is undiscoverable, full of footguns, and consistency is an afterthought.
Equivalent of "zip": `tar cjf OutputFile.tar.bz2 InputFileOne InputFileTwo InputFileThree`
Equivalent of "unzip": `tar xf InputFile.whatever.extension`
(This works whether `InputFile.whatever.extension` is bzipped, gzipped, or not compressed at all)
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12
They have made that change:
> This parameter has been deprecated. Beginning with PowerShell 6.0.0, all Web requests use basic parsing only. This parameter is included for backwards compatibility only and any use of it will have no effect on the operation of the cmdlet.
6.0.0 was released on 10 January 2018.
I don't think that's true at all. Compare powershell command names to UNIX command names for example. You can rest assured that Get-X will not change things and that there is almost certainly a Set-X that will, for example. You can tab complete variable names, cmdlet names, cmdlet switches, etc. Additionally, by piping objects instead of text, you aren't caught off guard by things like spaces in a path name.
> Like when I tell it to download something, I don't expect to have to futz with IE browser settings (WTF?!?!).
It definitely does have some flaws though, I'll give you that.
As an aside, you can use Invoke-WebRequest with the `-UseBasicParsing` switch to leave IE out of it. They definitely should have done that the other way around.