@derobert Both the R and Common Lisp REPLs echo 1, FWIW.

For a scripting language, I'd say it's quite common behavior. But no doubt my ignorance of programming languages lulled me into a false sense of uniformity.

Some Linux distro use /bin as a folder, some use /bin as a symlink of /usr/bin. Is this any kind of rule or just a choice?

@Biswapriyo AFAIK, /bin and /usr/bin are distinct things. Check the LHS.

Check arch.

@Biswapriyo The Arch FAQ says that choice is because of systemd: wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/…?

20 years down the line, Linux will just put everything in the root folder...

(Sorry, the chat box breaks the link on the ').

@fra-san Understood 👍

@fra-san It doesn't say that at all

Lots of systems have unified the /usr and / entries for a long time now

@MichaelHomer I was just referring to the sentence "Arch Linux follows the file system hierarchy for operating systems using the systemd service manager".

@fra-san I know what sentence you were referring to, it just doesn't say that

@MichaelHomer Right, it looks like I misread it, thank you. I see the Arch developers have explained their rationale (e.g. lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-dev-public/2012-March/…) without any mention to systemd.

Yeah. It's hard to see the value in it for a consumer-level system these days

Someone at work spotted the following pipeline in a bioinformatics-related forum: ls *.gz | awk '{print "gunzip " $0}' | bash

Never write code like that!

It's a case of "I know I can do this with that command, and that with this command", but not knowing how to properly combine them, or when it's apropriate to do so.

i.e. virtually all bioinformatics code

A few years ago I had some in front of me and it had the most enormous command substitution in the middle, and all it did was unconditionally output "0" after a chain of several awks and greps. But presumably at some point all the bits made sense

I really feel that a slightly more practical software carpentry-type training would be a huge help

@MichaelHomer We do have both Unix and Python training for our bioinformatics students and Ph.D. students (and post-docs, and other staff) here, and part of my work is to make sure that the people that teach those classes know what they are talking about.

@Kusalananda Does it work?

The issue is that when you're taught that you "get a list of files with ls", then this will be how you get a list of files, in loops, in pipelines and everywhere else.

Yes, and then everything looks like a nail

Shell scripting really just is not suited for the task at all, on top of all the usual bad things about it

@MichaelHomer To some degree. We have a Slack channel called "#Unix-tools" that I run, and it works more or less as a micro-U&L forum.

@MichaelHomer Interesting. What is "a slightly more practical software carpentry-type training " like?

@fra-san Yes, FHS, not LHS, sorry.

I am acronym-challenged.

@FaheemMitha Actually I just thought LHS was something I didn't know/I couldn't remember of. I agree that acronyms are hard.

What does main "$@" mean in shell script?

@overexchange The script was written with a function called main that essentially does all the execution

Within the script that function is being called with all the arguments that were passed to the script

$@ represents all the script parameters so if you called it as: ./script.sh foo bar baz it will essentially be calling main foo bar baz. Inside main $1 = foo, $2 = bar, and $3 = baz

ok

set -- hello world
main () {
	printf '%s ' "$@"
}
>/dev/chat main "$@"

Does anyone use lastpass on macos?

set -- echo hello Jeff
$@

sh -s <<END
cat
remember to quote your
variables Jesse
END

set -- echo fine!
'$@'

:)

@Jesse_b eval $(rev <<< 'esseJ ,olleH ohce')

@JeffSchaller Nice

@JeffSchaller printf '\325\211\203\205\045' | dd conv=ascii 2>/dev/null

decent