Subject: RE: [hackers-il] Bash Lecture Summary (Revision 4)

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 18:28:49 +0200

> Efficient? You do rally mean that converting the inode into
> list of strings and than firing up a monstrous interpreter just to
> know what is the length of that string, and firing up stat on EACH one
> (just a hint: stat is kernel call) is efficient? Now take into account
> time needed to learn Python and then, you call that efficient?

Omer and Moshez,

Do keep in mind that most people on this list are reasonably intelligent,
even if they are missing a particular skill that you happened to have.

We are all interested in learning about the most efficient solution to a
problem, for any given definition of efficient, but no one learn anything by
insults.

Shlomi can decide to trade correctness for simplicity, Zadka can decide to
trade efficiency for a language he feels comfortable with and they are all
nice examples of how programming works, it doesn't mean any of them are
idiots, their decisions are reasonable solutions for their problems.

Thanks,
Chen.

---

From: Chen Shapira <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 12:18:30 +0200

> And it seemed to me better for his audience that he explained 
> for them the
> limits of shell programming, then trying to fit the wrong 
> tool for the 
> wrong job.

You missunderstood his purpose.

The reason we don't give a damn about the program's correctness is because
this is a small script intended to demonstrate some useful and neat shell
features like pipes and wc. And it does. Perhaps he should note in his
lecture that this sample has limitations, but it doesn't make it a bad
sample. Many lecture and text-book samples aren't perfect and just show a
point. Many of them has no correct error handling, etc. Thats because they
prefer a simple program that shows the point well, rather than a complex
one.

Whether or not teaching shell in  world where Python exists is a good idea,
is for the audiance to decide before getting to a shell lecture. It isn't
relevant for the lecture itself.

BTW. Did you test your python snipplet? it doesn't work on my NT, with
python 1.52 installed.