Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- Subject: Re: Scripting Additions: Embracing the Horror of Unix
- From: garbanzito <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 23:20:25 -0700
at 2002 01 29, 17:35 -0800, they whom i call Stockly, Ed wrote:
AppleScripters should be protected from the "Horror of Unix".
they are protected -- they can avoid it completely if they
want.
Jon mentioned Ed Lai's method of applying an aete dictionary to Unix
shell commands and that certainly seems to be good place to start,
it will be very hard to encapsulate all of the functionality
of the shell commands without some compromise on syntax. i
suppose you could create an "argument record" to pass to
each command, but that would mean inventing terms for every
single switch in every unix command. the result would be no
more comprehensible than the shell. it might feel better,
but it wouldn't work better. and that doesn't even begin to
address pipes and redirection.
in fact it would be harder for some people who, knowing
unix, know the syntax they'd want; but to do it from
AppleScript they'd have to go through a translation process
(and Apple would never finish the documentation, as proved
by long experience).
i think it best to let unix be unix, write handlers to
simplify it for some scripters, and write scriptable apps or
OSAXen for speed where necessary.
but any commands limited to administrator or root access in Unix
would become extremely problematic for AppleScripters trying to
distribute to users in a number of different production environments
where users may not have access that a script requires.
in those cases, generally, the user would be restricted in
the same way they are in the GUI.
--
steve harley email@hidden