On: Modernizing AWK, a 45-year old language, by adding...

[gpvos]

During a recent HN discussion on pipes and text versus structured objects to transfer data between programs, I started wondering if CSV wouldn't be a nice middle ground.

[jerf → gpvos]

JSON Lines would probably beat that out: https://jsonlines.org/

I phrase that carefully. "Better"? "Worse"? Very subjective. But in the current environment, "likely to beat out CSV"? Oh, most definitely yes.

A solid upside is a single encoding story for JSON. CSV is a mess and can't be un-messed now. Size bloat from endless repetition of the object keys is a significant disadvantage, though.

[carlmr → gpvos]

I still think objects are great, but PowerShell makes it so hard to deal with them.

I think F#-interactive (FSI) with its Hindley-Milner type-inference, would have been a much better base for a shell.

[gpvos → carlmr]

I'm not familiar with F#, but I do hate CSV tools that try type inference on data; in my opinion the csvkit tools should have the -I option on by default.

[carlmr → gpvos]

F# does type inference like this:

    let x = 1;

x is now an integer. Now you can't do

    printfn "%s" x;

Only

    printfn "%i" x;

So it has strong static typing, but most of the time you don't need to be explicit about them. It can even infer function types.

If you use FSI (F# interactive( it will always print the signatures in between, so that it's really easy to explore interfaces.

[majkinetor → carlmr]

> I still think objects are great, but PowerShell makes it so hard to deal with them.

LOL, this is amazing...

[carlmr → majkinetor]

The thing is, I've used .NET a lot, and C# and F# I can code in my sleep. The same object system, integrated in PowerShell, makes it really hard to use.

[majkinetor → carlmr]

That is even more amazing.

What makes it "so hard". $object.Proprety or $object.Method() is the same. new versus new-object? [type] vs type ?