[GRASS-dev] g.parser: Note on setting bash' IFS to parse separate identities

[Glynn Clements]

Paulo van Breugel wrote:

> > Or even just remove the reference to bash from the 7.x documentation.
> > If you're using 7.x, Python is almost mandatory, so why would you
> > write bash scripts?
> 
> In what sense mandatory?

Mandatory in the sense that, if you don't have Python installed, a
large chunk of GRASS (wxGUI, scripts, temporal framework) will be
unavailable to you (and you'll have to create your own GRASS sessions,
because the "grass70" startup script is a Python script).

GRASS modules can be executed from any language which has the
necessary primitives (system() or whatever).

The main reason people write Bourne shell scripts is that it's the one
language interpreter that's guaranteed to be present on any Unix
system. It's certainly not because it's a nice language for writing
programs (the actual language is inherently compromised by the need
for it to be usable as an interactive shell).

But if you're going to be assuming the existence of GRASS 7 modules,
Python is even more likely to be installed than a Bourne shell
(Windows installations typically won't have a Bourne shell).

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