[TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view

[Henry Bent]

After rattling around in the back of a train car with nothing but my
thoughts, I emerged and said:

"systemd is a pox on our way of life"

and then promptly rolled over and went back to sleep.

-Henry

On Fri, 2 Jul 2021 at 17:38, Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> As I started reading it I found plenty to disagree with in the first few
> paragraphs but they completely lost me at "After all, moving from System
> V init scripts to systemd has arguably improvedthe Linux boot sequence."
>
> Um, no, just, no.
>
>
> On Fri, Jul 02, 2021 at 03:24:20PM -0600, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> > In this week's BSDNow.tv podcast, available at
> >
> >         https://www.bsdnow.tv/409
> >
> > there is a story about a new conference paper on the Unix shell.  The
> > paper is available at
> >
> >       Unix shell programming: the next 50 years
> >       HotOS '21: Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, Ann
> >       Arbor, Michigan, 1 June, 2021--3 June, 2021
> >       https://doi.org/10.1145/3458336.3465294
> >
> > The tone is overall negative, though they do say nice things about
> > Doug McIlroy and Steve Johnson, and they offer ideas about
> > improvements.
> >
> > List readers will have their own views of the paper.  My own is that,
> > despite its dark corners, the Bourne shell has served us
> > extraordinarily well, and I have been writing in it daily for decades
> > without being particularly bothered by the many issues raised by the
> > paper's authors.  Having dealt with so-called command shells on
> > numerous other operating systems, at least the Unix shells rarely get
> > in my way.
> >
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > - Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254
>       -
> > - University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148
>       -
> > - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail:
> beebe at math.utah.edu  -
> > - 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org
> beebe at computer.org -
> > - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL:
> http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy                  lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>
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