Another tool for updating /etc -- lua||other script language bikeshed

[Ivan Voras]

On 03/24/10 15:02, John Baldwin wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 March 2010 9:11:21 am Ivan Voras wrote:
>> On 03/23/10 16:08, John Baldwin wrote:
>>
>> [snip - looks like a good utility, will probably use it instead of
>> mergemaster if it gets committed, like the idea about automated updates]
>>
>>> To that end, I wrote a new tool that I think does a decent job of solving
>>> these goals.
>>
>> Since the issue comes around very rarely, I assume there are not many
>> people who also get the shivers when they see a shell script (and then a
>> "posixy" /bin/sh shell script) more than a 100 lines long? :)
>>
>> Wouldn't it be nice to have a "blessed" (i.e. present-in-base) script
>> language interpreter with a syntax that has evolved since the 1970-ies?
>> (with a side-glance to C that *has* evolved since the K&R style).
>
> "You can write Fortran in any language."

I feel I should quote some saying from a holy book saying "Ah, but some 
languages make it harder than the others!" but I don't know of any such :)

> If there are specific things in specific scripts that are poorly commented or
> implemented then I would work on fixing those.  The same is true of the
> mountain of C code in the tree.  Rewriting them in a different language will
> not automatically make them any better.

C is good enough. I'm after /bin/sh here.

> "Whatever language you write in, your task as a programmer is to do the best
> you can with the tools at hand. A good programmer can overcome a poor language
> or a clumsy operating system, but even a great programming environment will
> not rescue a bad programmer."  (Kernighan and Pike)

I'll accept it.