On 4 April 2010 23:32, Paul Malherbe <p...@tartan.co.za> wrote: > Again I totally agree with Uriel, rather use a good scripting language like > python ;-)
While I personally would choose scripting in a decent scripting language over doing anything but basic stuff in a shell script, one very valid reason for choosing a shell script over something like <insert favorite scripting language here> is portability. Pretty much every UNIX derivative and friends has a shell capable of executing sh scripts, not every *nix has <insert latest scripting fad here>. I personally don't want Python or Perl installed on my systems, but I have no choice in the matter if I want to use amazing-script X or super-duper-tool Y. I like scripting in TCL, but I don't expect anybody to have to install the full TCL suite just to run some basic script, and anything that isn't basic might as well be done in C. Al Gest