[dev] Shell vs C where is the border?

From: Szymon Olewniczak <szymon.olewniczak_AT_rid.pl>
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 20:39:08 +0100

Hi,
I was recetly wondering about the use cases of C and shell. I've seen that
this topic appears several times mostly when discussing sbase. Some of
you probably knows ffmpeg, software that allows to convert media files
between various formats. Imagine now that we have several smaller tools
that do one thing and do it well and to convert mkv wideo do webm we do:
        videostream movie.mkv | theoradec | v8enc > video
        audiostream movie.mkv > audio
        createwebmvideo video audio

But having so many individual programs is more harder to use that just
one (we need to run more commands), so reasonable would be to combine
all this commands to one script which would do all this work
automaticaly. So what solution would be better in your opinion? When
we should use shell scripts and when write new C programs to achieve our
goals?

BR,
Szymon
Received on Mon Mar 10 2014 - 20:39:08 CET