My google history hits for powershell for loop is is in the dozens.
this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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Bash was the first language I learned, got pretty decent at it. Now what happens is I think of a tiny script I need to write, I start writing it in Bash, I have to do string manipulation, I say fuck this shit and rewrite in Python lol
The sad thing is that even chatgpt can't program in bash. I just want a simple script and every single time it just doesn't work. I always just end up saying "write this in python instead".
Python's usually the better choice anyway tbf. I know piping isn't as good, but there are so many footguns!
Nushell and Fish can be really convenient too.
I used to adhere to sh for an OpenBSD machine but I switched to python, Rust and Go for, even simple things.
Python is just as portable these days (on modern hardware, caveats, caveats).
Honestly so intuitive that I start there too unless I have a need for speed or distinct memory control. There's no job too small for a python script.
Meh. I had a bash job for 6 years. I couldn't forget it if I wanted to. I imagine most people don't use it enough for it to stick. You get good enough at it, and there's no need to reach for python.
The older you get, the more things are like programming in bash.
i used powershell, and even after trying every other shell and as a die hard Linux user I've considered going back to powershell cause damn man
I am a huge fan of using PowerShell for scripting on Linux. I use it a ton on Windows already and it allows me to write damn near cross-platform scripts with no extra effort. I still usually use a Bash or Fish shell but for scripting I love being able to utilize powershell.
Yeah. The best way to write any bash script is:
apt/yum install PowerShell; pwsh script.ps1
I still have to look up the exact syntax of ifs and whiles.
I've coded in bash for a while
to be honest I agree and thought we would be using something more intuitive by now
Everything is text! And different programs output in different styles. And certain programs can only read certain styles. And certain programs can only convert from some into others. And don't get me started on IFS.
I think the cool kids are using Nu now
No, Makefile syntax is more extreme.
I swapped from Make to Just: https://github.com/casey/just
Way better, IMO. Super simple logic, just as flexible.
Sure, but bash is more relatable, I think
I find Makefile isn't too bad, as long as I can stay away from automake and autoreconf.
Ever since I switched to Fish Shell, I've had no issues remembering anything. Ported my entire catalogue of custom scripts over to fish and everything became much cleaner. More legible, and less code to accomplish the same things. Easier argument parsing, control structures, everything. Much less error prone IMO.
Highly recommend it. It's obviously not POSIX or anything, but I find that the cost of installing fish on every machine I own is lower than maintaining POSIX-compliant scripts.
Enjoy your scripting!
I wish I could but since I use bash at work (often on embedded systems so no custom scripts or anything that isn't source code) I just don't want to go back and forth between the two.
Yeah, using one tool and then another one can be confusing at times. 😅
If you're going to write scripts that requires installing software, might as well use something like python though? Most Linux distros ship also ship with python installed
A shell script can be much more agile, potent, and concise, depending on the use case.
E.g. if you want to make a facade (wrapper) around a program, that's much cleaner in $SHELL. All you're doing is checking which keyword/command the user wanted, and then executing the commands associated with what you want to achieve, like maybe displaying a notification and updating a global environment variable or something.
Executing a bunch of commands and chaining their output together in python is surely much more cumbersome than just typing them out next to each other separated by a pipe character. It's higher-level. 👍
If it's just text in text out though, sure, mostly equivalent, but for me this is rarely the use case for a script.
I'm not anti bash or fish, I've written in both just this week, but if we're talking about readability/syntax as this post is about, and you want an alternative to bash, I'd say python is a more natural alternative. Fish syntax is still fairly ugly compared to most programming languages in my opinion.
Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
I love fish but sadly it has no proper equivalent of set -e as far as I know.
|| return; in every line is not a solution.
It's the default on CachyOS and I've been enjoying it. I typically use zsh.
Yeah I also went bash -> zsh -> fish. Zsh was just too complicated to configure for my taste. Couldn't do it, apart from copy pasting stuff I didn't understand myself, and that just didn't sit right.
I've been meaning to check out fish. Thanks for the reminder!
Happy adventuring! ✨
I switched to fish a while back, but haven't learned how to script in it yet. Sounds like I should learn
Give it a shot after reading through the manual! (Extremely short compared to bash's!) It's a joy in my opinion. ☺️👌
PSA: Run ShellCheck on your shell scripts. It turns up a shocking number of programming errors. https://www.shellcheck.net/
Thank you for this. About a year ago I came across ShellCheck thanks to a comment just like this on Reddit. I also happened to be getting towards the end of a project which included hundreds of lines of shell scripts across dozens of files.
It turns out that despite my workplace having done quite a bit of shell scripting for previous projects, no one had heard about Shell Check. We had been using similar analysis tools for other languages but nothing for shell scripts. As you say, it turned up a huge number of errors, including some pretty spicy ones when we first started using it. It was genuinely surprising to see how many unique and terrible ways the scripts could have failed.
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Je comprend tellement! Je répond en français pour ma première réponse sur Lemmy juste pour voir comment ça va être géré!
I so understand! Answering I. French for my first Lemmy reply just to see how it’s handled.
Realizing now that language selection is mainly for people filtering. It be cool if it auto translated for people that need it.
Si yo también comprendo, qué necesidad de comentar todo el tiempo en anglais?
every control structure should end in the backwards spelling of how they started
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