[GRASS-dev] GRASS and QGIS on Win32, testing etc.

[Glynn Clements]

Moritz Lennert wrote:

> This also means that any shell scripts (e.g. g.mremove, v.dissolve, etc) 
> will either have to be replaced by C-versions (which kind of defeats 
> their purpose of being easily codable for a larger number), be coded in 
> a cross-platform scripting language (e.g. Python), or anyone who wants 
> to use these under Windows has to provide access to a series of shell 
> tools (e.g. through Msys).

Personally, I would favour switching to Python.

Apart from the portability issues, both Bourne shell and C shell are
*really* poor as general-purpose programming languages.

If you just want to run a sequence of commands, then a shell saves you
the trouble of having to quote the arguments and prefix the command
with an "exec" (or similar) command, as would normally be the case for
a normal programming language.

As soon as you get beyond that, the fact that they were designed as
interactive shells first and programming languages second starts to
become a major problem.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>