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sysguest

yeah but... that convention is so much of a security/bug headache

sometimes, its footguns seem worse than javascript...

hope some typescript-like "typed shell" becomes mainstream someday

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> hope some typescript-like "typed shell" becomes mainstream someday

The trouble with trying to invent a new, more robust shell language is you basically just end up re-inventing any number of scripting languages (eg Perl, Python, awk, ...), so you might as well use one of those.

Most regular programming languages aren’t well suited for shells because they have a verbose syntax due to their readability goals. But with a shell, the vast majority of times you’re typing in stuff that you have no intention of reading back ever again.

I’ve done a fair amount of research here and I actually think we do need a new programming language for the shell (and then I created one).

I wrote a blog about this problem: https://murex.rocks/blog/split_personalities.html#conclusion

Excellent article, thanks for the link. I do agree with the premise. But every time I write some Bash code and think there should be a better way to do this, I ask myself why I don't just learn Perl. I dunno. Feels like inventing another solution would just hit the old "there are now 14 standards" problem where it would solve some problems but introduce others (see: PowerShell).

I don’t disagree with you per se. But if the new shell solves enough annoying problems then I think it has merit in existing.

But then you run into the problem that you’ve learned a new language and built new scripts that only you can use.

I use Take Command (well, mostly TCC) in my Windows workstations but no one else does, so TCC specific batch files and aliases only work for me.

If you’re vastly more productive using these alternatives then it would be silly not to use them.

If your colleagues want to reuse the same scripts then they can install the runtime too. It doesn’t mean they need to write all their future scripts using that runtime.

> so you might as well use one of those.

Did someone say... Xonsh?! It's tough to give up the niceties of zsh and it's various plug-in ecosystems, but I would love to be able to use Xonsh [1] as a daily driver for exactly the reasons stated. It is already the language I lean on over bash for most utility scripts with its kitchen sink built-ins.

[1] https://xon.sh/

Oh this looks quite nice!

> hope some typescript-like "typed shell" becomes mainstream someday

Might want to check out nushell (https://www.nushell.sh/)

PowerShell

Powershell syntax is worse than bash argument quoting and it’s half-hearted participation in .Net instead of being designed as built-in makes it annoying to do anything advanced, plus its security defaults are almost never what is wanted to actually get stuff done.

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