Re: Structured (XML-like) input/output for shell apps?
> On 6/13/05, Humberto Massa Guimarães <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br>
> wrote:
> > Not necessarily. Just as you have "tableout" as an external
> > command (built-in or not) in Monad, you can have a Perl module
> > to print things in a tabular manner, expanding the column sizes
> > as needed (based on HTML::Format::Table or somesuch)
>
> But I doubt that'd be as simple as things are now.
>
As I said in my other answer, things will *never* be simpler as they
are right now. Any other stuff will tend to complicate instead of
simplify things.
> > Yes, and I withdraw :-) what I said about XML. But *any*
> > serialization / deserialization necessary for this scheme to
> > work would add (unnecessary) overhead. This and the fact that
> > you would create incompatibilities with other Unices ... Those
> > are indications that this won't be done.
>
> What kind of incompatibilities?
>
There are a lot of scripts today in production use that use the
output of ls, ps, in a text-way. If you want to put another command,
or another switch to "ls", ok, but the fact that you *can* do it
does not mean that you *should* do it. (see below)
> > Obviously, some Monad clone can be done with its entire
> > toolchain (monad-ls, monad-tableout) ...
>
> Why not ls --monad?
If you want to fork and maintain forever util-linux, I have nothing
to say about that.
But I *will* leave you (I'm going home from work now) with Occam's
razor:
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitem.
(Things shouldn't be multiplied without necessity)
IOW: if it's not broken, don't fix it.
--
HTH,
Massa
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