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From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@mssgmbh.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell,comp.unix.programmer,comp.programming.contests
Subject: Re: The First Pure Shell Contest (PUSH): relativepath
Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:58:55 +0100
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Jens Schweikhardt <schweikh@schweikhardt.net> writes:

>     The First Pure Shell Contest (PUSH)
>
>               == Motivation ==
>
> The shell is not known for powerful string processing. Seasoned
> programmers use various combinations of sed, awk, cut and others to
> perform the more sophisticated transformations, or sacrifice portability
> by using their shell's extensions, like arrays. But calls to external
> utilities and use of shell extensions are often not needed. Knowing what
> the POSIX shell can do may turn a slow non-portable script into a
> blazingly fast and portable hacker's delight. The goal is to show the
> absurdity of forking and nonportable constructs when a nice and small
> pure shell solution solves the problem just as well.

I spent some thoughts on this because I was interested in at least
having a general idea how a solution could look like. OTOH, the reason
why I work in miserably paid programming jobs is essentially because I
enjoy solving software problems a lot more than dicksizing contests.