Re: Useless Use Of Regexes

From	Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.misc
Subject	Re: Useless Use Of Regexes
Date	2025-03-26 00:42 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<vrvigv$gce5$3@dont-email.me> (permalink)
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On Tue, 25 Mar 2025 13:03:45 +0100, Marc Haber wrote:

> This is a classic example why shellscripts are inferior. If you had
> written that in python, you could just ingest iproute's output in a
> python data structire and access it naturally.
>
> A very wise German person, today a friend of mine, used to say 25
> years ago: "Verwende perl. Shell will man können, dann aber nicht
> verwenden." In English that would be "Use Perl. You want to be able
> to use Shell, but then don't use it." Today, of course, that would
> be python.

There is a certain challenge in seeing how far you can push things in
a shell script (or specifically, a bash script), before giving up and
switching to Python. For example, figuring out how to deal with
arbitrary file names, which might include funny characters like spaces
and newlines -- can that be done in bash? Yes it can. But maybe it’s
more trouble than it’s worth ...

My classic example of a large, yet well-written shell script is the
configure script for FFmpeg
<https://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=tree;h=refs/heads/master;hb=refs/heads/master>.
It’s over 8000 lines. Obviously it must be handwritten, not generated
by GNU Autotools in the traditional way, because you can actually read
it and understand what it does.

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Thread

Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-24 20:34 +0000
  Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> - 2025-03-24 21:48 +0000
    Re: Useless Use Of Regexes The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2025-03-24 22:57 +0000
    Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-24 22:59 +0000
      Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-25 08:30 +0100
        Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-26 00:35 +0000
          Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-26 08:20 +0100
      Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2025-03-25 11:09 +0200
        Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-25 13:03 +0100
          Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-26 00:42 +0000
            Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-26 08:21 +0100
              Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-26 19:45 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-26 21:43 +0100
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-26 23:50 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-27 07:58 +0100
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-27 07:25 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1118@zugschl.us> - 2025-03-27 16:51 +0100
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-27 21:05 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes marrgol <marrgol@address.invalid> - 2025-03-28 12:21 +0100
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2025-03-28 11:42 -0400
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2025-03-28 18:46 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Chris Ahlstrom <OFeem1987@teleworm.us> - 2025-03-29 11:40 -0400
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-28 20:25 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Wayne <wayne@nospam.invalid> - 2025-03-31 23:54 -0400
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-03-27 04:08 -0400
          Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-03-26 00:47 -0400
            Re: Useless Use Of Regexes rbowman <bowman@montana.com> - 2025-03-26 16:51 +0000
              Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-03-27 03:13 -0400
      Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Pancho <Pancho.Jones@protonmail.com> - 2025-03-25 12:08 +0000
    Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-03-30 14:04 +0000
  Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> - 2025-03-25 15:29 +0000
  Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-03-30 14:02 +0000
    Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-30 21:15 +0000
      Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-03-30 22:04 +0000
        Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-03-31 01:26 +0000
          Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-04-06 08:40 +0000
            Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-07 21:39 +0000
              Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-04-07 21:00 -0400
              Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-04-08 02:05 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-04-07 22:06 -0400
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-08 05:49 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2025-04-08 15:39 +0300
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-09 01:16 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes c186282 <c186282@nnada.net> - 2025-04-08 22:32 -0400
                Shell command history (was: Useless Use Of Regexes) Geoff Clare <geoff@clare.See-My-Signature.invalid> - 2025-04-09 13:26 +0100
                Re: Shell command history (was: Useless Use Of Regexes) Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-12 06:55 +0000
                Re: Shell command history (was: Useless Use Of Regexes) Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-04-12 23:55 +0000
                Re: Shell command history Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> - 2025-04-14 09:47 +0100
                Re: Shell command history Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-14 22:37 +0000
                Re: Shell command history Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-04-15 23:28 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@usenet.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2025-04-09 10:53 +0300
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-12 06:55 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-04-12 13:07 +0000
              Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-04-12 11:23 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-13 04:54 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Stéphane CARPENTIER <sc@fiat-linux.fr> - 2025-04-13 18:25 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-04-14 22:39 +0000
                Re: Useless Use Of Regexes candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-04-13 19:00 +0000

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