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Scripting in ocaml
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Date: | 2006-12-21 (15:00) |
From: | Richard Jones <rich@a...> |
Subject: | Re: [Caml-list] Scripting in ocaml |
On Wed, Dec 20, 2006 at 10:41:20PM -0500, Denis Bueno wrote: > I've been writing bash scripts to perform various build- and > development-related tasks, and I don't enjoy it. I won't bore you with > detailed reasons why. The upshot is that I'd like to script in OCaml. > > I have considered writing a few camlp4 extensions to make it easier to > write scripts: > > 1) create a syntax which grabs environment variables: > > e.g. $FOO would grab the value of the environment variable FOO > > 2) some sort of more convenient process interaction, e.g., for piping. I think it's a great idea - I'd love to push OCaml for scripting. However I hope your camlp4-fu is up to snuff. You'd want, as you say, a syntax for pipelines and file redirection, but more importantly you'd want a very simple syntax for running commands. So you can write some unholy OCaml/sh combination like: let nr_files = int_of_string ` ls | wc -l ` Actually, even Perl isn't a very usable alternative for shell scripting because of the amount of code you have to write just to fork off a command and capture the output. Rich. -- Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd. Merjis - web marketing and technology - http://merjis.com Internet Marketing and AdWords courses - http://merjis.com/courses - NEW! Merjis blog - http://blog.merjis.com - NEW!