In article <4cc999$424@jive.cs.utexas.edu>, wilson@cs.utexas.edu (Paul
Wilson) wrote:
> What do we look for in a syntax for a shell language, including one
> that's typed at an interactive prompt?
What I look for in an interactive shell is entirely different from what I
look for in a scripting and programming language.
I already have tcsh to work as my interactive shell. I wouldn't dream of
writing text file processing software as tcsh scripts, though.
Similarly, I have Perl for writing text file processing tools, but I
wouldn't dream of using a shell that had Perl syntax.
> One thing I've been thinking about lately is that (again, rightly
> or wrongly) people are willing to learn command languages that have
> a very different syntax from normal programming languages
Absolutely. I expect my interactive command language to have different
syntax from the programming languages I use, because they serve very
different purposes.
mathew
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