[mwcampbell]

> ps -ef | grep 'tobekilled' | grep -v grep | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill

versus

> processes.filter{name = 'tobekilled'}.map(kill)

Yes, actually, I would like the second one better (although I know it's only pseudo-code). To me, the most egregious problem with the Unix way of doing this is exemplified by the "grep -v grep" part. The first grep command didn't specify precisely what you wanted, i.e. the subset of processes whose executable name (or argv[0]) is "tobekilled". It can't, because ps produces lines of text intended primarily to be displayed on a terminal and read by a human, and grep merely searches those lines of text for a substring. It's all a very lossy process. So you had to add a second grep to work around the fact that the first grep also matched a particular occurrence of "tobekilled" in a command-line argument other than argv[0]. But what if someone were running "vim tobekilled.txt" at the same time? These sorts of workarounds are to Unix as epicycles were to Ptolemaic astronomy -- evidence that the foundation is flawed.

> maybe for the newbie who paradoxically already understands functional and object-oriented programming, I'll grant.

I think it would be easier to teach the fundamentals of functional programming -- not the crazy academic type-theory stuff, but basics like map and filter -- than all the intricacies and gotchas of combining Unix tools like grep, sed, cut, xargs, awk, and so on. You do realize that, in addition to the shell language itself, you casually dropped in a whole second language (Awk) in your second example, right?

> The Lennart bit was a joke. The OP's post was so histrionically overwrought that I responded sardonically. Apologies if you were offended.

It bothers me that you used Lennart's name as a synonym for "anti-Unix", as if that's his most salient characteristic (if it's even true of Lennart). How do you think he would feel about that "joke" if he read it? Especially on top of all the other vitriol he's received?

[felixgallo]

Don't get me wrong, tics like 'grep -v grep' are suboptimal, and indeed that's why people invented killall, and xargs -0, and so on. But in practice, there exist zero systems without workarounds and grotesqueries, and the unix philosophy, rather than any competing philosophy, is the entire reason why you're able to use any of the networks or computing devices you use today.

Can we do better? Sure! One could imagine a reformation of the unix philosophy to center around strongly typed streams that could totally work after you put about 20 years of effort into replacing the existing tools. All too often, though, the reformers are people who don't understand the philosophy and want to try a weird collection of ad-hockery instead.