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by dzidol 2344 days ago
https://xkcd.com/927/
1 comments

Unlike every other alternative shell, Oil runs existing bash scripts to avoid this problem.
I don't really think Oil is relevant to this topic. The only good reason I can think of for someone to script in bash is for portability purposes. If someone wanted portability without bash's shitty syntax, something like Python would be a much better candidate than Oil. One could also argue that there's no meaningful difference between e.g. fish scripts and Oil scripts because neither will work on the standard shell. It's also possible to run bash scripts from fish by simply calling bash. Right now, Oilshell is a reasonable choice for an interactive shell with bash compatibility, whereas Oil syntax is just as, if not more, useless for public distribution as fish.

As I see it, the goal for a project like Oilshell (a shell with both a new syntax and support for standard bash syntax) would be to replace bash as the default shell in distros. Until then, Oil scripts lack the primary feature of bash scripts just like other alternative shells.

the goal for a project like Oilshell (a shell with both a new syntax and support for standard bash syntax) would be to replace bash as the default shell in distros.

Right, that's the goal of Oil.

Right, so what's the point in switching to Oil as a scripting language when that hasn't happened?
Funny you mention Python being a better candidate than Oil as Oil is built a top a fork of Python 2. https://www.oilshell.org/blog/2018/03/04.html#faq