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0 pointsint_19h7y ago0 comments

> I can write my code in bash and forget about it.

In practice, this approach often results in code that works only on Linux, or on Linux and macOS. I especially hate it when people shove #!/bin/bash as a shebang, and doubly so when it's in scripts that are a part of some npm package.

(On BSDs, Bash is not installed out of the box, and when it is installed, it's not in /bin, since it's not in the base system.)

Still, though, that's a good reason to stick to the original Bourne shell. Powershell, whatever its advantages may be, simply has too heavy dependencies on Linux, since you're dragging in CLR. At that point, like you said, might as well just use Perl or Python for scripting.

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Alupis7y ago

> I especially hate it when people shove #!/bin/bash as a shebang

It really ought to be `#!/usr/bin/env bash` , if you're writing a bash script. That'll solve the location problem.

Otherwise, if it's a bash script, you can't get around needing bash on your system (although a great many bash scripts are actually "sh" shell scripts that just happen to specify bash because people are used to that sort of thing).

gnulinux7y ago

I think this is a good point but, there is an implicit but well known notion that if you write bash and care about platform coverage, you just write bourne shell. I didn't explicitly write it, but I assumed I would write bourne shell, and whatever shell in random Unix will be able to handle it as well as bash in linux||macOS. As a python lover, I simply can't find one reason to use any other scripting language other than python as long as I accept poor performance and dependencies. I can't see what problem Powershell is supposed to solve.

darkpuma7y ago

    #!/bin/sh

Leave bash out of it tbh. In practice that will often end up being bash, but sometimes it won't be an in those cases you'll have yourself covered. Test it with busybox's sh or with dash, just to make sure.

reacweb7y ago

I disagree. I have seen developpers trying to write posix conformant scripts but only testing on bash on redhat. When deploying on ubuntu, /bin/sh was dash and the script did not work. I think people shall use #!/bin/bash until their script has been really tested using dash or busybox. If they do not want to do this additional test work, they should never use #!/bin/sh

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int_19hOP7y ago

> there is an implicit but well known notion

I wish it was well known. There are many people who don't even realize that Bash and Bourne shell are two different things. From there they assume that if their system runs it correctly, then it's portable.

laurent1234567y ago

"#!/usr/bin/env bash" is the right way to do it, but "#!/bin/bash" is so common that I'd just symlink it there if it's not already present. Any reason why these OSes don't do it automatically?

klibertp7y ago

For FreeBSD, for example, `/usr/bin` is reserved for core system binaries only; whatever is installed from ports ends up in `/usr/local/bin`, and the shell bundled with the system is tcsh, not bash.

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