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From: not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev)
Subject: Re: Over-Elaborate Shell Scripting
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In comp.os.linux.misc John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 12 Mar 2026 14:12:21 +0000
> The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Perhaps that is why I never ever shell script if at all avoidable.
>> Like Regexp, and PERL it seems to be the province of wannabe gurus
>> who cant code C.
> 
> Horses for courses. C is much more capable for general-purpose work,
> but it requires a lot more wrangling (or an external library) to do
> batch file operations effectively.
> 
> F'rexample, I'm in the process of putting together a home-grown "static
> site generator" for use with a free host that doesn't allow server-side
> stuff like PHP; the job is to assemble complete HTML files for each
> page from header/sidebar templates and page-specific content files.

I've done the same thing using PHP, running the script from the
command-line to generate the static site. I've done it in Bash
earlier too, but I ran into things that are just much easier in
PHP since it's built for generating HTML. 

> It's totally possible to do that in C, but I'd have to either roll my
> own code or pull in non-stdlib dependencies for stuff like enumerating/
> looping over the files in a directory; shell script makes that a first-
> class language feature. And the core of the work (tacking files to each
> other) is likewise something that's easily doable in C, but provided out
> of the box in the shell (it's just what cat is designed and named for.)

I have seen a static site generator written in C, but I don't think
it was anyone's idea of elegance. A C program that only needs to
run once (for its author, at least) can cut a _lot_ of corners!

I am sometimes tempted to use C for dynamic sites, though many
claim PHP is just as fast these days anyway.

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