Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL?

pcg@decb.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi)
Sat, 11 Sep 1993 12:24:26 GMT

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
[8 earlier articles]
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? prechelt@ira.uka.de (Lutz Prechelt) (1993-08-30)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? ram+@cs.cmu.edu (1993-08-30)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? mcdonald@kestrel.edu (1993-08-31)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? wright@hicomb.hi.com (David Wright) (1993-09-01)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? pardo@cs.washington.edu (1993-09-02)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? joshua@athena.veritas.com (1993-09-07)
Re: Scripting vs. Programming language vs. 4GL? pcg@decb.aber.ac.uk (1993-09-11)
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Newsgroups: comp.compilers
From: pcg@decb.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Antonio Grandi)
Keywords: Lisp, design, comment
Organization: Prifysgol Cymru, Aberystwyth
References: 93-08-096 93-09-022
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1993 12:24:26 GMT

On Tue, 31 Aug 1993 00:42:35 GMT, Jim McDonald (mcdonald@kestrel.edu) wrote:


    In fact, lisp is a wonderful shell/scripting language. [ ... ] People
    who have been spoiled by lisp environments find the restrictions of
    unix shells maddening [ ... ]


I thoroughly agree with this. Actually *any* nice language can be used as
a shell language; it is not difficult for example to extend Icon, or Perl to
be a shell (or any other language which sports an interpreter).


Actually some people at Yale about ten years ago did a Unix/PDP-11 lisp shell;
wonderful stuff; one could write something like "(sort (ls))", or perhaps
"(mapcar (function cc) (ls "*.c"))" and so on. Down with pipes, that
are a silly and restrive idea! (The original Multics shell was supposed to
have a lisp like, functional, syntax).
[The Lisp shell was written up in two papers in SIGPLAN, one by John Ellis,
one by me. We didn't think it was a big deal but Ellis has told me that he's
gotten more comments on that than on any of his more substantive later work.
-John]
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