FYI: The Unix philosophy

Lloyd Kvam python at venix.com
Mon Mar 9 14:21:52 EDT 2009


On Mon, 2009-03-09 at 12:29 -0400, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> I would argue that the Unix Philosophy has room in it for both "patch"
> and "Perl".  "patch" makes it in easily, whereas Perl knocked down one
> of the walls but many people don't mind because of its usefulness.  If
> something isn't useful it is most decidedly not part of this mindset.
> 
I think Perl is a great improvement over sed/awk.  I think Wall is
essentially making the argument that some of the traditional tools
(beads) put the boundaries in the wrong places.  Perl is his
counter-example.  (This is probably a never ending argument as clever
programmers will continue to tinker with our tool set.)

> > I think the need for AWK/Sed crib sheets argues that the tools we've
> > traditionally used for piping text might benefit from some fresh
> > insights.
> 
> I use crib sheets for various things, actually.  My tiny little brain
> can only remember so many things; hence my notes.  I use
> sh/sed/awk/patch/Perl quite a bit because they help me get my job
> done.

Sure.  I've got the same problem with brain capacity.  

I'm old enough that I was not including Perl in the traditional tools.

Getting the job done is the name of the game.  Learning to make good use
our tools is part of the challenge.

-- 
Lloyd Kvam
Venix Corp
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