why?
Because bash feels clunky to write and work with for anything non-trivial, especially compared to other scripting languages.
Why not another scripting language (no compile necessary)?
Because bash and sh are installed nearly everywhere. Any other scripting language means the user is required to have that installed, and that is far less likely to be the case.
If I could write my scripts in a nice syntax, but be sure my users will be able to use it effortlessly by distributing to them compiled versions, then that would make both of our lives easier!
Thoughts? Are there any languges that do this?
Doesn’t powershell do this? I’ve been learning powershell, and they keep making a tech agnostic claim along these lines, but I haven’t tested it on Linux yet.
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I used it on a Mac and on Windows, for me it feels very modern when compared to bash (although I never was a bash expert).
However, the problem is that it’s not installed by default on Linux (at least on most distros as far as I know) and Mac, and Windows machines might have an outdated version which you’ll have to take into account.
So unfortunately it doesn’t meet OP’s criteria that it should “just work” without installing an interpreter.
Not quite - even in PowerShell 7 there are some features that only work on Windows and Windows only comes with PowerShell 5.1 by default.
The way I used to solve this problem back in the day was with a statically compiled Perl binary.
I’m gonna pile in with yet another option that isn’t a language that compiles to bash…
Consider Ruby for easier shell scripting. With its back tick syntax for executing shell commands, it’s quick to use when you want to glue together a series of commands. …and then you get to use a sane syntax for your script’s logic.
Ex:
# Check my history for all usages of the xsv command # and extract the filename csv_files = `grep ~/.zsh_history "xsv" | awk '{print $3}'`. split("\n"). map(&:chomp) # list any csv with my phone number csv_files.select { | filename| `grep #{filename} "555-1234"`.chomp != "" }.each {|filename| puts filename}Unfortunately shell script is not as portable as you might be anticipating. Different distro run different shells, with different settings, and also different tools. Think BSD grep vs GNU grep.
I’ve seen multi distro scripts that are also able to bootstrap their own assets for each distro/architecture. Don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to check that considering
/etc/os-releaseexists in pretty much every unix like environment.And having it run on a specific shell type could also be an option.
I discovered a fun one the other day: there is literally no way to represent word-boundary anchors that’s valid in both GNU
sedand BSDsed. https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/393968/38050That’s what the POSIX spec is for. BSD and GNU commands may differ, but they both support what’s specified by POSIX. By limiting your calls to it, you can write portable script with no problem (I’ve been doing that for the last few years without issue).
Just use Python. If you absolutely need it on every system use go and compile it down to a binary.
Hate this because most bootstrapping I do is within a
Dockerfilewhere I don’t want to install the entire runtime and its dependencies just to complete a build step.
Why not another scripting language (no compile necessary)?
But you’re describing compiling that new language to bash…
Yes, I’m answering why I am not taking a completely other scripting language
In other words, I am making the case for a compiled language by answering the question of why i am not considering a language that doesn’t need it.
Is transpiling a form of compiling?
Yes, that’s where it’s name comes from!
Although it doesn’t crosspile to bash, I think a good middle ground is bitfield/script. Basically you can do many things you would normally script very simply with nice syntax and distribute a binary.
python is usually the next step up in admin land
python is a pretty standard install on linux systems since so many things like you’re talking about use it
Not only that it’s basically everywhere, but even if it’s not, you can compile it using something like nuitka and still use it.
Huh, why doesn’t python just ship this? Managing python installs is annoying as hell.
I would guess mostly because python interpretes are just about everywhere.
Also the binaries compiled with nuitka end up being much bigger in size. A simple script of a few kb can and up in the hundreds of mb when you start compiling the dependencies, so it’s not a perfect solution.
This is about python packaging, like making/getting libraries/apps rather than compiling binaries, but it’s pretty relevant here:
https://chriswarrick.com/blog/2023/01/15/how-to-improve-python-packaging/
Python or Perl. IIRC, I’ve seen systems with a Perl install by default, but not Python.
I don’t see why bash would be used at all here. If you want something that doesn’t need another interpreter, then just compile a binary.
Possible use case: scripts that are found in a codebase for doing… Codebase things. Like setting up dev environment for example.
But then building it still requires whatever scripting tool you use. Including the bash-ified version would not for practice, as it wouldn’t be very human readable and would have to be kept in sync with the source script. It’s much cleaner and simpler to just require python for your build environment.
That’s a use case for Docker
There is Batsh, a simple language with c-style syntax that compiles to bash and batch.
Why not use a compiled language that compiles to fat binaries (rust, go etc)?
It’s worth noting any compiled language can make a “fat” binary (e.g., C++), you just need to use static linking.
Why not another scripting language (no compile necessary)? (…) If I could write my scripts in a nice syntax, but be sure my users will be able to use it effortlessly by distributing to them compiled versions, then that would make both of our lives easier!
Would it make sense to describe your idea as a typescript for bash or sh?
There’s always Golang which compiles to an x86 binary. But that’s probably not what you want since you probably want something readable and editable on the end system.
Not exactly what you asked for, but take a look at Nushell
I’m familiar with NuShell and looks very nice. But unfortunately yeah, not what I’m looking for. It would require installation by user.
Install nushell vie bash and then pipe your commands into it?
op asked about using bash because it’s already there. Your answer is the complete opposite of that. twice
https://github.com/tdenniston/bish is one such language.
I’d also recommend Shellcheck which helps prevent many problems with shell scripts.
