Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2013 09:29:00 -0600 (MDT) From: Warren Block <wblock@wonkity.com> To: "Teske, Devin" <Devin.Teske@fisglobal.com> Cc: "<freebsd-current@freebsd.org>" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: [CFT] Patch to bsdinstall to support root-on-ZFS and GELI Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1310090914210.37118@wonkity.com> In-Reply-To: <13CA24D6AB415D428143D44749F57D720FC46904@LTCFISWMSGMB21.FNFIS.com> References: <52546844.2010608@freebsd.org> <5254774C.8030204@pix.net> <525478EA.8080207@freebsd.org> <13CA24D6AB415D428143D44749F57D720FC46904@LTCFISWMSGMB21.FNFIS.com>
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On Tue, 8 Oct 2013, Teske, Devin wrote: > "But shell is nasty; slow; and not as powerful as C" (it depends in what > context; the first is rhetoric, the second is only true for poor implement- > ations, and the third may be true in some contexts, but I consider the > answer to "how maintainable is it" to be a factor in the "power" of a > language, so don't necessarily consider C to be more powerful than > shell as the latter is as-or-more maintainable with fewer LoC and a > higher return on investment; see previous [above] arguments). My question would be: why are sh and C the only choices? If the answer is "because that's all we have in base", is that a valid concern? As far as sh, it lacks many high- or even mid-level constructs and has real problems with quoting, parsing, and output (2>&1 >&3, for example). These make it harder to do things (aka, more code to accomplish a task, more code to be maintained, more difficult to modify) than the higher level Perubython languages. In any case, thanks for working on this. A functioning program in any language is better than a non-existent "better" one.
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