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

[Paulo van Breugel]

On Wed, Nov 5, 2014 at 12:22 PM, Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>
wrote:

>
> 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).
>

Ah, sorry, I misread your line as it being mandatory to have scripts
written in python.

>
> 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).
>

I am sure python is a nicer language, but right now for me (and the same
might be true for others) bash scripting is easier (not that I am any good
in bash scripting, I just have very little experience in python).
Personally I am working on my Python skills, but that is a slow process.
For me the most useful documentation I have used in that respect is
explanations how to 'translate' bask to python (can't remember right now
which webpage that was though).

>
> 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).
>

Yes, perfectly clear, thanks for the explanation (and sorry for my sloppy
reading of the original statement).

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