A Shell Language in Lisp

https://github.com/naver/lispe/wiki/7.-Shell

by todsacerdoti • 5 years ago

83 44 5 years ago

ephaeton• 5 years ago

Compare that to this beauty: http://ftp.scsh.net/pub/scsh/0.6/scsh-manual.ps.gz pp. 10 onward. It's such a pity scsh is dead ...

bjoli• 5 years ago

The only thing I really miss from scsh is the process notation (which is arguably the hardest to implement). The rest is pretty well covered in most schemes. Srfi-115 has sexpr regular expressions, srfi-166 is, IMO, the best formatting utility there is.

cat199• 5 years ago

not very 'alive', but there is a 64 bit port to current scheme48 around, so it can still be used. didn't really make it to distro packages (yet) however

chriswarbo• 5 years ago

I found the shell-pipeline package for Racket pretty nice a few years ago https://docs.racket-lang.org/shell-pipeline

The API seems to have changed a bit since I last used it, so not sure how nice the current version is. It's also apparently used by a shell-like language called Rash, but I've not used that either https://docs.racket-lang.org/rash

kwhitefoot• 5 years ago

Interesting.

But the readme doesn't say if the record and field separators can be changed. Space delimited fields are not always useful.

clauderoux2• 5 years ago

Yes, good idea. I don't think it would be that complicated... Actually, the language already exposes a "split" method that can be used exactly for that.

musha68k• 5 years ago

Always nice to see cool new lisp projects. The shell angle there also reminds me of guile and especially babashka: https://github.com/babashka/babashka

rgrau• 5 years ago

There's also closh (https://github.com/dundalek/closh) which also provides scripting capabilities appart from the pure interactive shell.

As a newcomer to clojure my question is: what would be the practical differences and deciding factors for doing what would be a ".sh" in babashka vs closh?

phyrex• 5 years ago

Practically, mindshare, because that translates to longterm support and ability to get help if you need it. I know lots of people that use babashka but not a single one that uses closh. Of course, I see the irony in making the popularity argument for a lisp! :-)

pandatigox• 5 years ago

As an aside, it's really cool to see that Naver is not only open sourcing a lot of their technologies, but doing it a lot of it in lisp too.

For those who aren't aware, Naver is the Google/Yahoo equivalent in South Korea. Their main product is a search engine and web portal, but they also have community pages (Naver Cafe), Music, Translation, Webtoons (webcomics) and so on. They have a subsidiary company that's created the LINE messenger app.

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

This thread is likely a good place to ask:

What modern alternatives to `.sh` scripting exist? Tcl? Is Fish objectively better than Bash and ZSH? Are there any thin wrappers and transpilers on top of sh? Or maybe just good old Perl?

And how does this project address normal pain points of shell scripting, like using arrays and iterating on them for example?

I was thinking a lot on the topic lately and currently have no good answers (never studied the topic in detail). I suppose just replacing `sh` scripting with Golang is also an option. Not the strongest typed or least verbosive language out there but it has a very good cross-compilation story, compiles really fast and produces single binaries that are easy to distribute. So might go with that.

Python is out because startup time wasn't great last I used it for CLI tools (might be an outdated info however, any metrics)? Ruby is also a pretty solid candidate; the lack of static typing is, eh, 50/50 -- might not be important after all.

I also know a guy who replaced Python with OCaml for quick scripting which is rather bizarre to me but knowing a bit more about OCaml nowadays, that actually can work just fine -- and OCaml is very terse.

I would prioritize speed of startup and terse code over everything else. Static typing I want but can very likely do without. I don't care much how portable the program/runtime is; I can distribute it to my machines and I have some influence in my work about what tooling to use.

Any practical recommendations?

Y_Y• 5 years ago

Perl, Julia, Python with PyPy, bash (but pretend it's something else)

thaumasiotes• 5 years ago

I also know a guy who replaced Python with OCaml for quick scripting which is rather bizarre to me but knowing a bit more about OCaml nowadays, that actually can work just fine -- and OCaml is very terse.
I would prioritize speed of startup and terse code over everything else.

If speed of startup and terse code are all you want... what's the problem with OCaml? It's got static typing too.

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

The only problem is that I'm a novice in it and it will take some significant investment of time and energy to learn it well. Which I still plan to do.

Was just wondering if there are replacements for shell scripting that are quicker to learn.

swirepe• 5 years ago

What's wrong with bash? Specifically, what are you trying to do that you can't?

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

Wanted a `for` loop between two numbers, couldn't find a good way in 10 minutes, made the script require `zsh`.

AlchemistCamp2• 5 years ago

Ruby is fantastic for scripting. It has quite a few of the same conveniences that made Perl great for scripting and it's a lot easier (for me at least) to maintain and understand when seeing it months or years later.

freedomben• 5 years ago

Yes, yes yes. I started Ruby because I got a job at a Rails shop. I didn't like it all that much for a while, but then I decided to write a CLI program in Ruby and break out of rails.

I quickly realized nearly everything I didn't like about "ruby" was actually rails. After a couple of years I moved on and don't do rails anymore, but I ruby is still my go to for any script that requires arrays or maps (the point where bash begins to be really painful).

Ruby is the best scripting language ever IMHO*. Ruby one-liners (inherited from Perl tradition) make it plug nicely into a bash script also.

* I haven't tried Julia yet but plan to.

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

Yep, I agree. Only used it twice years ago for that and as another sibling comment mentions, it is pleasant to use.

How is the startup time though? That's important.

codemac2• 5 years ago

Byron's rc. https://github.com/rakitzis/rc

Sane quoting eliminates and a lack of recursive expansion make ssh a breeze.

Pattern matching, backquote status, and pipe status simplification are all incredibly easy to get right.

C-like syntax for blocks means nested hierarchies are easy to understand and to write correctly.

Simple small binary, doesn't require readline and can be built for almost every architecture and OS.

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

Wasn't aware of that one and it looks very promising, thank you. Does it work with `parallel`? Or does it have a similar built-in facility itself?

flaie• 5 years ago

You can definitely use Clojure using Babashka, https://github.com/babashka/babashka

mjul3• 5 years ago

Now that you mention OCaml, I have been using the OCaml dialect F# for scripting.

It works just like any script (.fsx files) and you can also compile it ahead of time.

There is a REPL for experimenting and the type system provides for a superior IDE experience.

It has the full .NET ecosystem at its disposal. And algebraic data types to ensure you cover all edge cases.

And last but not least - if you are scripting any kind of data wrangling, the Type Providers feature of F# offers a very powerful way to build those ETL jobs with type safety with just a few lines of code.

pdimitar12• 5 years ago

Agreed on all accounts but still -- how is the startup time?

dmortin• 5 years ago

Emacs also has a shell in Lisp EShell: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eshell.h...

wejick• 5 years ago

I wonder why this is under Naver company github, looks more like hobby project. Curious on how they use this kind of project in their environment.

clauderoux2• 5 years ago

I have been interested for years in Data Programming, a weird expression coined by Christopher Ré (PR at Stanford). Basically, the idea is to be able to automatically apply filters on your data before building your model in an ML pipeline. This version of Lisp comes with data structures and pattern matching expressions, to detect some regular patterns in your data... This is the reason why we also have implemented a Python library so that your sieves can be called from within your Python code beforehand.

A Shell Language in Lisp

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