Re:Become Shell Literate
by chubot on Saturday December 12, 2020 @03:17PM
(#25401296)
BTW I think the general idea of Oil's syntax is working out: start in "command mode", and then when you see the RHS of =, changing modes to Python-/JS- like expressions. There a few other cases where you switch to expression mode, like proc p(a, b) [1]
So far nobody has complained about any of this, I'm guessing because it looks very familiar, and that was intentional. Oil takes some pains to literally look like shell + Python syntactically, with better semantics.
I noticed that a few other shells are having problems with this command/expression distinction, and I discussed it like 3-4 years ago with Ilya Sher (of NGS) and a few other people. They were also having the same problem.
For example, does / mean a path separator or the division operator? Does * mean a glob or a multiplication? In Oil, this is no problem. It's obvious depending on the context.
The awk and make integration is still doable but not done. Awk might require a notion of "lazy expressions" or "lazy arg lists", which would be shared with dplyr-like functionality. Oil's Zulip is open for discussion on these ideas :)
So far nobody has complained about any of this, I'm guessing because it looks very familiar, and that was intentional. Oil takes some pains to literally look like shell + Python syntactically, with better semantics.
I noticed that a few other shells are having problems with this command/expression distinction, and I discussed it like 3-4 years ago with Ilya Sher (of NGS) and a few other people. They were also having the same problem.
For example, does / mean a path separator or the division operator? Does * mean a glob or a multiplication? In Oil, this is no problem. It's obvious depending on the context.
Though I'm interested in more feedback on this, and the latest release is available to try as always :) https://www.oilshell.org/release/latest/
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The awk and make integration is still doable but not done. Awk might require a notion of "lazy expressions" or "lazy arg lists", which would be shared with dplyr-like functionality. Oil's Zulip is open for discussion on these ideas :)
[1] https://www.oilshell.org/release/0.8.5/doc/command-vs-expres...