Lichen: The Sed Build System | Hacker News Reader

Lichen: The Sed Build System

github.com

42 pointsn4jm410 comments

> At the top, we have a not strictly POSIX compliant, multi-argument shebang:

  #!/usr/bin/env gsed -nE -f

> It may break on some fringe UNIX implementations, but it is necessary for the system to work.

I think I can vaguely remember that I had issues with something like this on a bog-standard linux. env has the -S option though, which should help on systems where multi-argument shebangs don't work.

Hm, yeah, I've been using

    #!/usr/bin/env -S ansible-playbook --diff

to turn ansible playbooks to scripts, but reading https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/env.1p.html it looks like -S isn't actually POSIX-specified.

-S is available from macOS env, which is good enough in my book! Unfortunately macOS sed and gsed differences are a huge pain in the ass

Can't sleep, must publish build systems for more fringe programming languages.

Brainfuck anyone?

Calling sed(1) a programming language is quite a stretch (although I guess you could say it's Turing-complete), as is calling a core Unix tool “fringe”.

Maybe we need a tongue-in-cheek emoji to mark submissions like this. Or would that ruin half the fun?

As someone who only used sed for quick pipeline editing, I'm curious of what constitutes a "sed project" that this tool aims to build. Does anyone have examples?

Most likely the kind of project that uses lookup tables to synthesize a decimal alu, per https://sed.sourceforge.io/grabbag/tutorials/lookup_table_co... ;-)

Insta-install. No more ad-hoc sed-ing! Now I can add lint, test, and build steps to my `sed` applications.

Read that as “Lichen: the sea’s build system” and was expecting a comparison of lichen (a kind of moss) to makefiles.

I think my brain is still in holiday mode haha

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