Re: transports directory

[woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods)]

[ On Thu, July  6, 1995 at 17:44:57 (-0700), Tom Samplonius wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: transports directory
>
>   I have no love for Bourne style shells.

And neither do I, which I why I remarked on the smail3-maintainers list
the other day that if I was funded for such a project I'd re-implement
zmailer with a real language for configuration and extensions, such as
rc(1) from Plan 9 if a shell-like language is still appropriate, or
perhaps scheme, if a more elegant language might not be best for the job.

>   Now I know this might provoke quite a response (quite likely negative 
> :) ):  I propose to replace the zmsh stuff with either tcl or perl.  

You bet!

Please, for the love of computer science, *NOT* tcl or perl!

I don't give a tinker's damn how many folks are familiar with either.
Would you have chosen the original version of BASIC, or the original
minimal Pascal, as an appropriate language?

Perl and tcl are inappropriate replacements for the same reason Bourne
shell syntax is.

Yes, I know perl-5 has made leaps and bounds of improvements in the
language department, but for a purist it's still a nest of rattlesnakes
ready to bite.  I won't even mention what I think is wrong with TCL.
Sorry to sound like a flamer, but IMO these are important issues and
well worth the emotional baggage -- especially for free software.

Scheme interpreters are a dime a dozen, and several are very suitable as
embedded extension languages.  Not to mention that the language has a
*real* standard.  There are many volumes of documentation available.
Even the GNU folks are considering it as *the* standard extension
language for their tools.

However, we must also remember that sh has a standard behind it now, and
programming in it is also a pre-requisite skill for any system
administrator, thus it is an equally good candidate for an extension
language, and thus still a good choice for zmailer.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734			VE3TCP			robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>