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On Jul 30, 2007, at 3:35 PM, Mark J. Reed wrote: On 7/30/07, Kevin Bradley <email@hidden> wrote:
On Jul 29, 2007, at 11:34 PM, Ed Stockly wrote: Rather than answer your question I'm going to tell you to learn Python or Perl or Automator or whatever other technology. I'm not saying there is no place for that at all on this list, but if someone is struggling with the language, at least help them get past whatever roadblock their facing is more important than promoting your pet technology.
Now, at last, I feel you've gotten to the heart of the whole issue. While sometimes the "best" solution (defined as "fastest,", "most convenient", etc. as defined by the one writing) may be "do shell script," all too often the list is used as a means of proselytizing someone's favorite language (or selling someone's book).
I'm going to call BS on that, again. It's just not so. Some of us reply with suggestions that the OP use a "do shell script" solution, but I sure haven't seen that many replies that say "use a different language". As has been said before, there's a big difference between saying 'Using { do shell script "ls" } solves your filename-finding problem' and saying 'Here's a nickel, kid, go get yourself a real programming language.' Some of the replies in this thread may have tended toward that latter statement, but that's wholly orthogonal to the original complaint.
So while it's not a situation where those things are mentioned every day, it comes up more often than you think. |