[dev] convergence

From: Sam Watkins <sam_AT_nipl.net>
Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2013 10:01:10 +1100

On Tue, Jan 01, 2013 at 02:13:14PM +1100, Daniel Bryan wrote:
> Bash is my go-to for system scripting, but for something that will run
> 100% of the time on my system for years it's not over-engineering to do
> it efficiently.

It would be nice to extend C with suitable function and macro libraries,
and a little new syntax (can be done with a pre-processor) so that we could
write compact code in C as in shell. Try setting up a shell pipeline in C,
and you'll see what I mean. There's no reason it should be more
difficult to do stuff in a compiled language, we barely ever use truely
dynamic stuff like "eval" or varibles by name in the shell anyway.
Combined with a good quick compiler or interpreter, we could get a real
"C shell" into the bargain.

tinycc for example is well fast enough to be used in an interactive REPL
as if it were an interpreter; and that's without any attempt to optimize
by pre-loading headers or whatever.

Sam
Received on Wed Jan 02 2013 - 00:01:10 CET