scripting environments (was: /bin/date and coreutils)

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2007-05-11 00:27:54 +0200, Jochen Küpper wrote:
> On 10.05.2007, at 23:56, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
>> And Python isn't installed everywhere.
>
> Well, that's not my experience. It's even on all number crunchers and big 
> iron machines I have used over the last years, as scheduling/batch systems 
> also use it;)

Well, I have an access to a Solaris machine, where perl is installed
but not python.

>> The system version is used, and this is not necessarily a problem,
>> except if some modules only present in MacPorts are used.
>
> That's the real point - you are in principle back to the same point
> as with shell scripts - unless you use only the basic stuff.

No, with Perl, one can do very much without using modules (even much
more than shell scripts and the standard utilities), and many modules
are provided in standard, so that using the system version would not
be a problem in practice.

> If you do that in a shell-script (using only basic stuff), you are
> as safe, because /bin/bash and /bin/tcsh are "always" there...

They are always there under Mac OS X. But some Unix platforms do not
necessarily have a /bin/bash (e.g. Solaris). And I don't think this
is the case of tcsh either (/bin/csh is probably much more common,
but anyway http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/).
/bin/sh is always there, but this is not always a POSIX sh (e.g. it
isn't under Solaris).

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)