Bashing the Bash – Replacing Shell Scripts with Python (2017)

Re:Bashing the Bash – Replacing Shell Scripts with Python (2... by bdowling on Sunday March 27, 2022 @02:53AM (#30818304)

> How is bash performant?

Typically, time spent interpreting control flow in a bash script is dwarfed by time spent in the programs called by the script.

> It is literally interpret by lines

It's just splitting lines into words to build up commands. It's not compiling C++.

> starting a whole process per if statements..

In the common pattern `if command1; then command2; fi`, if command1 is a builtin (e.g., `test` or `[`), then bash does not create a subprocess.

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Re:Bashing the Bash – Replacing Shell Scripts with Python (2... by kaba0 on Sunday March 27, 2022 @04:55AM (#30818786)

Still doesn’t make it fast in any meaning of the word, which was my original criticism.

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Re:Bashing the Bash – Replacing Shell Scripts with Python (2... by bdowling on Sunday March 27, 2022 @01:37PM (#30822185)

You asked how bash is performant. I responded with reasons its performance is good in many applications. Here”s one more: bash starts up faster than other interpreters (e.g., Python), and startup time can often be a significant factor in overall performance.

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