As the author of a POSIX standard utility, I would advise you to only reach for such utilities when portability is the most important thing.
POSIX utilities are not great. Lex and Yacc included.
POSIX utilities are not great. Lex and Yacc included.
I say this only as it has been many years since I have written one, but I thought this OCaml presentation on a POSIX shell held the structure in high regard.
https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/code_parsing_...
I am partial to hand-coded recursive descent purely because I struggled with Lex and Yacc too much when I tried.
And a lot of magic, with special variables, macros, and functions that you must know. And unclear scoping.
[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/02/why-i-use-c-when-i-believe-i...
I remember reading that post of yours a year or so ago! It was so bizarre to me, but also really fun. I feel like you are among what is probably a very small group of people who could write something security-sensitive in C, and I would feel comfortable using it. (I am still less than thrilled that I have to rely on OpenSSL, regardless of the process improvements its developer team has made in more recent years.)
I still (unfortunately, IMO) write a lot of C. Back in 2004 I thought it was great fun. But now that I've worked in safer, batteries-included languages, I find C to be a huge drag. I'm so much more productive in Rust or even Java. I could never ever ever ever approach the level of rigor you bring to your C code; I just don't find doing all that stuff to be fun or interesting... to the contrary, it feels like a huge drag: if I were "required" to do all that, I just wouldn't write any code at all in C in the first place, knowing that having to do all the testing and fuzzing and static analysis stuff would burn me out.
Anyhow, I hope I don't sound like I'm being critical... quite the opposite. I just think we live in a magnificent world where people's brains can work so so so differently when it comes to the same topic.
> I feel like you are among what is probably a very small group of people who could write something security-sensitive in C, and I would feel comfortable using it.
This is probably the most complimentary thing anyone has ever said to me. Thank you! I hope I can live up to that.
My take on POSIX utilities would be only to use them on Linux platforms where they effectively form a "native" part of the platform.
Yes, you should only use them on POSIX.
My utility does build natively on Windows, though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_POSIX_subsystem
Microsoft had previously been the largest AT&T UNIX licensee with Xenix sales on the TRS-80 model 2, so they were familiar with the need.
Does Windows claim POSIX compatibility these days? I didn't think so? I remember NT's old POSIX subsystem, but is that even a thing anymore?
> My take on POSIX utilities would be only to use them on Linux platforms
I mean, only use them on POSIX-compliant systems. Linux is just one of them.
At the risk of sounding childishly derisive, when someone is talking about "portability", I think they're generally not bothering to include Windows in the mix, as Windows doesn't really share all that much of a common denominator with much else.