

Why are scripting languages not suitable as shell languages? (One Answer) - curtis
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting-languages-e-g-perl-python-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell-langu/3640403#3640403

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tgflynn
I've found Python to be an excellent language for automating systems
administration, data processing and other tasks.

I never write shell scripts longer than maybe 10 lines or so. Anything larger
is better done in a true programming language. Part of the reason is the
better defined syntax. For example quoting in shell scripts can be very
difficult to get right.

Also Python scripts can be made cross-platform without depending on having a
full set of Unix tools available. They also support multi-threading and
network communications - try doing that with a shell script.

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billswift
I remember when I first started using Linux in 1996, there were several
oddball shells that came with the distro in optional directories, I read their
READMEs but didn't even try to use them. The ones I remember most clearly were
a clutch of them based on slightly different versions of BASIC (I don't
remember what any of them were actually called) and Guile which was based on
Scheme.

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curtis
The full Stack Overflow thread is at
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-
scripting...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting-
languages-e-g-perl-python-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell-langu). I particularly
liked this guys exposition on Microsoft's PowerShell (about the last three
quarters of the answer).

