Sunday, February 20, 2011

The Wisdom of Unix shell scripting for systems

Prototype with Perl, Ruby, Python, Tcl, etc and to optimize you have to dive into using an FFI (foreign function interface).

Prototype with a Unix/Linux shell (bash, ash, ksh, etc) and to optimize you rewrite proc/commands in your favorite (compiled?) language and use stdin/stdout as the interface.

When piping makes sense (or concurrent processes with lightweight I/O requirements), 30+ years of shell wisdom is your friend.

If shell scripts can be trusted to boot your Unix/Linux distribution, can the shell be trusted as the controller/glue for your application?

/todd

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