For those interested in custom shells

Dusty · 2004-06-22 17:21:01

There's been some talk here about a better shell and better window managers and such. I found an apparently dead project some enterprising programmer with tons of time might want to take up:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyshell/

If python scripting is better than bash scripting, a python shell would be better than a bash shell, no?

Dusty

sarah31 · 2004-06-22 20:19:40

Dusty wrote:

If python scripting is better than bash scripting, a python shell would be better than a bash shell, no?

its all relative i suppose. they also say pants are better than no pants.

Dusty · 2004-06-22 20:22:53

sarah31 wrote:

they also say pants are better than no pants.

That is relative...

xerxes2 · 2004-06-22 20:42:26

not so bad idea Dusty, maybe you can make your own distro based on pyshell and ion

Dusty · 2004-06-22 21:12:10

My distro is Arch. Shells and window managers have nothing to do with the distro itself, they are just programs.

sarah31 · 2004-06-22 22:07:09

Dusty wrote:

My distro is Arch. Shells and window managers have nothing to do with the distro itself, they are just programs.

ok fine but what about pants? on or off?

Dusty · 2004-06-22 22:42:06

off is good if you're in the shower, on otherwise.

contrasutra · 2004-06-22 22:51:02

Pants restrict your creativity.

I was messing with the Pyshell code about a week ago (I was looking to create something similar). It's past my level, but a very cool project none the less.

I still use ZSH though. Its TAB complete can't be beaten.

scottro · 2004-06-22 23:00:57

Yes, but were you wearing pants?
I also use zsh. The only problem I have ever had with it, (and I've seen it listed somewhere as a bug) is that sometimes, STDERR redirection won't work properly.

Here's a nice girly man (according to my friends) zsh prompt.

PS1=$'%{e[1;32m%}%n@%{e[1;34m%}%m %{e[1;36m%}%1d %{e[1;36m%}%#%{e[0m%} '

BTW, has anyone else, speaking of zsh, noticed that ordinary users' PATH seems to be missing some things in it? IIRC (it's been awhile since I set it up) I forget if the answer was in /etc/profile or somewhere else, but it's a minor nuisance--sigh, I wonder if it merits a bug report (he writes, suddenly feeling diligent.)

And for those wanting to play with ksh, here's my stupid ksh tricks page

http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/ksh.html

Dusty · 2004-06-23 04:15:19

I've thought of switching to zsh, mostly because bash' tab completion is starting to slow me down. What differences are there, for example, in scripting? It's still better to use bash or python for scripting, though, right, because that's the "standard"?

Dusty

sarah31 · 2004-06-23 04:34:02

only satanist and saskabushians use zsh

i hav eused tsch and bash so far and prefer bash personally

kumo · 2004-06-23 08:58:51

I have never tried zsh as I have always stuck with csh or bash so can someone tell me the difference between the zsh and bash tab completion? I have the bash-completion package installed as well and I have edited this to match various files (unfortunately cannot do mime types!).

So, what will I gain if I move to zsh?

scottro · 2004-06-23 12:25:18

You'll be more 31337--err, 377--err, something meaning elite with 3's and 7's in it. (Sigh, I'm too old for that.)

Zsh tries to combine the best features of bourne and c shells--you'll find that just about everything you do, scripting wise, in either type of shell will work in zsh. However--note, that I mentioned earlier, there is a bug in STDERR, that ~sometimes~ occurs. (Just tried to do an example, and couldn't get the bug to do its thing).

Another thing you'll gain is that it can handle floating point decimals. This can be useful if you're married to someone from a country that uses metric and you are not used to the metric system. Then, when they ask you what the temperature is, you can have a little script handy that does the conversion. Ok, this could also be done in python or perl, or piped to bc, but with zsh you don't have to do so.

While it has shorthand syntax in for loops and the like, I stay away from that for portability reasons.

So, practical advantages, that I see are that if you are also used to Cshell syntax, you can use it, as well as Bourne shell syntax and the handling of floating point decimals. As far as tab completion, I don't see much difference, but don't use bash very much these days, so I might be missing something--zsh does tab completion and seems to do a good job of it.

As I said, if you use it with Arch, you will have to edit something to fix your PATH, as you'll find that it only gives you /bin and /usr/bin or something like that--I simply add it to my .zshrc though I assume there's a file somewhere in /etc that I could fix.

I'm not a very good shell scripter, so can't give finer details of its advantages--like many things, I suspect we try to find logical reasons for what is simply an emotional decision.

Zephirias · 2004-06-23 12:49:24

scottro wrote:

You'll be more 31337--err, 377--err, something meaning elite with 3's and 7's in it. (Sigh, I'm too old for that.)

You mean "1337".

Dusty · 2004-06-23 15:26:46

scottro wrote:

I suspect we try to find logical reasons for what is simply an emotional decision.

What a quote, what a quote!!

I'm sticking with bash because of Sarah. :-D What's this about a bash-completions package, what's it do?

Dusty

scottro · 2004-06-23 22:49:38

Dusty, my friend Josh did some sort of thing on that (Looking for link as I type)

Ahah

http://www.jmglov.net

Has some stuff on the bash completion.

That statement was a paraphrase--it was either a mutt/pine debate or vi/emacs.
I wish I had the exact quote, it was a bit better.

Dusty · 2004-06-24 02:10:54

Thanks, that's a really useful link.

Dusty

scottro · 2004-06-24 02:27:29

I'll let him know you said so, I'm sure he'll be pleased

xerxes2 · 2004-07-01 22:32:29

This is something for you Dusty. http://unununium.org
A whole os based on python and with a goal to create something "better" than the WIMP UI. Made in Canada?

Dusty · 2004-07-02 00:37:28

Nice link its a bunch of quotes of complaints I've had about GUI and OS in general... I figure an OS should be entirely object oriented... hmmm.

Thanks for the link, I'm really interested in this one. They're planning on reimplementing everything, which seems a little bit overkillish to me. Is it true that a person can write optimized assembler that is better than a good C compiler? I thought that was a myth that was dissolved years ago...

Edit: Hey Sarah, Know Dave Poirier from Winnipeg?

Dusty

xerxes2 · 2004-07-02 18:26:36

hehehehe..I thought you should like it.
I really don't get why they should do everything from scratch, except for the challenge. These guys could have made something like ion in no time if they used an already existing kernel.
BTW. Ion rocks!!! I found the menus and hotkeys conf files but i still can't find where to put scripts for frames and workspaces. I know kludges.lua (I saw your gimp stuff) but where do I define frames and workspaces? Like your config with 4 vims. I can't find any examples at the ion site.
(I know, threadnapping again)

Dusty · 2004-07-02 18:43:22

That's not in config files, its in hotkeys. You can split the windows either vertically or horizontally, and you can resize a particular frame. There are also hotkeys to add workspaces and switch between them.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the default keybindings for these actions.

man ion lists them all, I think.

Dusty

Arch Linux

#1 2004-06-22 17:21:01

For those interested in custom shells

#2 2004-06-22 20:19:40

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#3 2004-06-22 20:22:53

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#4 2004-06-22 20:42:26

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#5 2004-06-22 21:12:10

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#6 2004-06-22 22:07:09

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#7 2004-06-22 22:42:06

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#8 2004-06-22 22:51:02

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#9 2004-06-22 23:00:57

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#10 2004-06-23 04:15:19

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#11 2004-06-23 04:34:02

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#12 2004-06-23 08:58:51

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#13 2004-06-23 12:25:18

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#14 2004-06-23 12:49:24

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#15 2004-06-23 15:26:46

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#16 2004-06-23 22:49:38

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#17 2004-06-24 02:10:54

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#18 2004-06-24 02:27:29

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#19 2004-07-01 22:32:29

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#20 2004-07-02 00:37:28

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#21 2004-07-02 18:26:36

Re: For those interested in custom shells

#22 2004-07-02 18:43:22

Re: For those interested in custom shells

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