# Philosophy

[Unix is my IDE – mkaz.blog](https://mkaz.blog/code/unix-is-my-ide/)

# Unix shell programming: the next 50 years

[src](https://sigops.org/s/conferences/hotos/2021/papers/hotos21-s06-greenberg.pdf)
and
[discussion](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammingLanguages/comments/nfcij6/unix_shell_programming_the_next_50_years_hotos/)

## The good

- Universal language for interoperability
- Works with anything and is a medium between anything
- Incredibly expressive (and often efficient) EDSL for stream processing
- Interactive environment for interacting with the computer

## bad

- insane specification that isn't implemented correctly in **any**
  shell, not even worth diving into
- too arbitrary - it has infinite flexibility and that prevents it from
  doing anything
- too dynamic - everything in a shell script is dependent on global
  state, which prevents any form of optimization or program change
- performance cannot scale because it cannot be optimized

## Future

Smoosh  
fully formalize and implement the posix shell, showing differences
between specifications across semantics

PaSH/POSH  
annotation languages as a high level specification interface for
interactive programs, can be used as abstract models for command
behaviors! This allows for better system specification that can actually
be enforced (thinking of tools like Alloy here!)

static reasoning  
previous bullets name annotation languages that give us information
about the shell - why not dynamically rewrite and inspect every shell
command?

# Utilities

[fuck](https://github.com/nvbn/thefuck) corrects your last console
command. [Cool, but obscure unix tools · Kristof Kovacs
✈️](https://kkovacs.eu/cool-but-obscure-unix-tools/)aas a whole list of
them. Worth poking around to see what might be useful - in the future!
[werc - A sane web anti-framework](http://werc.cat-v.org/) [Why I Use
Suckless Tools -
Xe](https://xeiaso.net/blog/why-i-use-suckless-tools-2020-06-05)
[GitHub - casey/just: 🤖 Just a command
runner](https://github.com/casey/just) [GitHub - sharkdp/hexyl: A
command-line hex viewer](https://github.com/sharkdp/hexyl)

# Alternatives

[Oil shell](https://github.com/oilshell/oil) is a new Unix shell
alternative that can be compiled and deployed as a native executable.
[Nushell](https://github.com/nushell/nushell) approaches the shell
environment with structured data.

# Configs

[Be careful editing bash
scripts](https://thomask.sdf.org/blog/2019/11/09/take-care-editing-bash-scripts.html):
\`bash\` tracks the byte position in the file during execution and scans
lines accordingly. This example shows a user editing a line that has
dangerous consequences in the file - and even though some dangerous line
is still commented out, the byte offset of everything in the file
changes, so the dangerous piece of code is executed. Insane. It's okay
to load your program into memory before running it - really.