The Case for Nushell (2023)

for i in 1..10 {

    print $i

}

really all that more readable than

for i in {1..10}; do

    print $i

done

Like, am I taking crazy pills? They're basically exactly the same!

>>wpm+XC
Bash is an advanced beast. In Bourne, it was

    for i in `seq 10`
    do
        print $i
    done

Which is pretty much readable though. The only issue is Pascal vs C syntax. As a fan of the former, I admit that the latter is more advanced: it stacks better. E.g. consider

    if (test -f junk) rm junk

against

    if test -f junk; then rm junk; fi

The former “avoids semicolons that Bourne requires in odd places, and the syntax characters better set off the active parts of the command.” [1]

1: Rc—The Plan 9 Shell https://9p.io/sys/doc/rc.html

>>kalter+gK
The semicolon is required only when not using new lines to split the command words, as in

sleep 60; do_the_thing_that_needs_a_minute_wait

It's not necessarily required in the for loop either, I tend to prefer the more compact method of putting the "do" on the same line as the for. It can be written as

for i in {1..10}

do

    print $1

done

Having "done" be the signifier of the "the for loop context ends here" is 3 characters more than "}" or ")" or whatever else. "done" is more color coming off the screen with syntax-highlighting, and can be typed in two keypresses with a "d" and a "tab" in any editor from the last 30 years. It just seems like a very very inconsequential nitpick. At least Nushell doesn't pull a Python and just have "invisible space" be the end of the for-loop.

One line conditionals are doable as well in the shell.

test -f junk && junk

or

[[ -f junk ]] && junk

You can even just use [ -f junk ] if double brackets is giving the yuck.

zlacker