What does this do in bash: [@]?

[Karl Auer]

On Sat, 2022-07-30 at 12:16 +0100, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 30, 2022 at 10:19:19AM +0100, Peter Flynn wrote:
> > On 30/07/2022 00:41, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > This sort of thing is generally much easier in Python,
> > 
> > It's actually much easier in pretty much anything except the shell
> > :-)
> 
> Quite!  About the only virtue of the POSIX shell (along with its
> relatives, e.g. bash) is

The single biggest virtue is that it is everywhere, dependably, on
every Linux machine (very niche/specialist distros sometimes excluded).

> Beyond that, while it _can_ be used for programming [...] it's
> perhaps the worst-designed language for that purpose that I use
> routinely.

Because it wasn't designed for that? But I too have become adept at
solving problems with it that would be much better solved in Python or
Perl - and why? Because it is always there. Nothing has to be
installed. There are no versions (python or python3?). There are no
libraries (ooh, do I have to install urllib? urllib3?). There are no
library paths. It is there and it is ALL there and it is ALWAYS there.

The closest I have ever come to a "dependency" is having to install jq
for some AWS-related stuff.

Regards, K.

PS: I know - all generalisations are lies, including this one :-) As
with jq one could regard entire programs as "dependencies" like cat,
echo, grep - but they too are always there. Try writing a non-trivial
systems program in Python without a single import...  And I know that
there are shell versions too, but they are eons apart, and the
differences tend to be arcane.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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